Quote Originally Posted by gabe View Post
travel limitation: there is; you may not have observed it, but it's there all the same. I wouldn't mention it here otherwise A washer doesn't fix the problem. A free travel mount does. I verified it.
very small thickness: we all thought the same thing (that it shouldn't affect the contact patch that is), myself included, prior to verify it by testing, but it does. Obviously how much it affects the contact patch depends on how much you lap the IHS; but it doesn't take much I can vouch for that. I lapped my 920 no more than 5 minutes (hand pressure) on the lapping machine, and it made a huge difference in the contact patch (I lost good contact with stock mounting). I didn't measure exactly how much I removed, but from 10 years experience with my lapping machine I can tell you that I removed between 0.003 and no more than 0.005" (<0.12mm)
Interesting...I just thought a travel limitation would only occur if the hold down plate was resting on the retaining e-clip which I didn't notice. Also visual inspection of the TIM coverage in block removal always looked good (or at least as good as other blocks), but not having a non IHS spread to compare to, it's pretty hard to tell visually.

Not the first nor the last time I'll miss something ...only way to know for sure would be to test it as you've done..

Look forward to seeing some of this data, I'm also curious to see what lapping in general does for net benefits.