Wow, this escalated quickly. Is this normal for this forum?

peterbr1, I won't have time to pull the shims before the wheel balance. If that fixes the problem (and I'm not expecting it to) then I won't have to do it.

BillsGU, I'm going to Bob Jane's who do 4WD tyres, so I'll have a word to them about making sure the balance is done on the right machine. Thanks for the tip.

Ben-e-boy, I'll get the tyre guys to check the castor (I incorrectly called it the camber in my last post). Thanks for the tip, also.

However, as I said in my opening post, the dire warnings ("...just adds preload on the bearing, it's a bandaid fix...") are what I hear from a variety of people, but I have yet to learn of a single person who has actually had problems caused by removal of the shims. The amount of people who must have done this fix should have resulted in at least one or two reported failures. I'm trying to hear about them.

Please be aware that I'm not trying to be antagonistic. Warnings are cool: I like them. They mean I can assess a risk. But if that risk has no evidence of occurring then the warning is ultimately one that has a very low, or even zero, priority. This is a standard risk assessment outcome, if you've ever needed to do this sort of thing.