what have you used to make the aluminium spacer and how did you fix it?
I went to lowes and bought a 3ft piece of aluminum strip. It's next to the threaded rod and sheet metal. I think it was 1/16" thick. It was 1" wide, they have other widths. Bending in a circle gives people trouble, I got lucky doing it by hand going slowely.
For the melted shift I just replaced the whole thing with a 8 mm long socket with a hanger bolt jb welded into the end with some washers and such