Ah, I see the point in the plastic thingy now. Now installed. I'm still kerflummoxed by the spacers though.
If I follow the Shimano instructions (2 spacers drive side, 1 non drive side for 68 mm shells), I can't even get into the big ring, let alone have a rubbing problem (the mech won't move that far, even with the higher adjustment screw as far out as poss). If I put one spacer in on the drive side, I get rubbing, but do I crush the tube?
Santa Cruz blur (orig version). It's a real pain! Guess I'm just going to have live it or buy a new mech (i've found in the past the Shimano sometimes change the cage width as time goes on so an old mech won't work on a new chainset cos the cage isn't wide enough).
just fitted new crankset to my 2005 spesh stumpjumper fsr, fitted as instructions... got a poor working chainline, changed to 2 spacers on non drive side and 1 on drive side - works perfect !!! reduced chainline from 50mm to 47.5mm
i think the moral of this story is, measure the chainline first before taking off the original crankset. Then try and reproduce it with the supplied spacers for the new one.
I've just installed 2008 HTII cranks into a RaceFace DH X-Type BB (because the BB cups have twice as much thread-width as the Shimano BB cups), but the Shimano BB that came with the cranks only came with three 2.5mm spacers (not three different sizes).
Also, I deliberately omitted the recommended 2.5mm spacer on the drive side, putting it on the non-drive side instead. This was because I previously stripped the BB frame thread on the drive side, and I wanted to reach undamaged thread, but then I found that I actually got a better chainline (50mm) as a result. The Shimano recommended chainline is 47.5mm to 50mm, I think.
Admittedly, when the front mech is in the position for the granny ring, it's a fly's tadger away hitting the frame, but I've managed to adjust the screw to protect the frame. It only just changes down though, it took a lot of careful setting up otherwise the chain would stay on the middle chainring.