Well, after being frustrated with the shafts getting caught on each other and having one end either not drop or raise when it wasn't supposed to, I decided to try to make a set of shaft spacers for it. It ended up being a little more difficult than I thought it would be, but I got it done. I had to do this without a warp on the loom of course, so I haven't tried it yet. If the shafts keep having that problem, then it's got to be the fault of the chains! If that happens - I give up!
The spacers themselves are deck screws that have a piece of plastic tubing screwed on. It's a good solution because the tubing is pretty slick and it can be any length. Obviously there is one of these on each side.
On the negative side, this might make moving heddles a real bear! But it may be doable if I raise the shaft first to add / remove the heddles from the top heddle bar and then raise all the rest of the shafts or add an extension to the chain to lower the shaft to deal with the bottom heddle bar. I have quite a few heddles on the shafts now, so I'm hoping I won't face this issue any time soon.
Tomorrow I'm going to call Macomber and ask about the tendancy to thow off the tie rods. I looked through my tie rods today (supper hooks all), and noticed that some of them have a longer piece of metal that hangs over the lam. That part on some tie rods is about 1 3/8 inches but 1 5/8 inches on others. The longer ones seem to stay put better. I need some more, and if they don't have the long ones I'm thinking of switching to texsolv although I'd rather not as I think tie rods are easier to install.