IIRC I was able to do all disassembly with various jigs and fixtures the press. As to the dimples being critical, cant help. 

Alright about to button up the gearbox and just want to verify the endplay of the front counter bearing.

I've been having a difficult time getting the measurement "A" with my micrometer, it's all over the place.

I opted to use plastigage as @EuroDat has suggested.

I found Yellow Clevite brand plastigage (MPY-1) 0.23mm-0.51mm...

 

I torqued down the front cover + gasket + plastigage and was not able to get an accurate reading on the plastigage, opted to add the shim.

Front cover + gasket + shim (0.4mm original) + plastigage got me a ~0.37mm gap between the bearing and the inside of the front cover. (this was the squish of the plastigage)

I measured the depth from the face of the front cover to where the bearing should sit at ~3.38-3.4mm

I'm going to make a wild guess that the 0.75mm (uncompressed) gasket will squish down into 0.4mm...

If i subtract the depth that I measured by the squish of the gage... I get (3.38-3.4mm - 0.37mm = ~3.01-3.03mm)

Which means I should be running between a 0.4mm - 0.5mm shim....

I think that seems pretty reasonable...

 

@Patcon @EuroDat can i get a sanity check on this? 🤔

If you torqued the cover, I don't think you'll get anymore squish...

In the workshop where I worked (a long time ago), we always used the plastigage and left that table for what it is. Far too easy to make mistakes taking measurements.

I would torque it down to specs when taking the measurements. The gasket will still seal when you do the final assembly. Don't use any glue on the gasket went doing your measurements.

If you are fitting the front cover + gasket + shim (0.4mm original) and getting a reading of 0.37mm on the plastigage, I would opt for a total shim size of 0.7mm. Don't go over the total measurement with your shims.

The bearings have (small) clearances and with the pastigage you are pushing the bearing to the most rear position. You don't want to push the bearing into a pre-loaded position so a little bit of free play won't hurt.