Rich -
You tell a very interesting story about the shims. There should be no shims. What you are looking at is an assembly error by the Trail Manor factory. I am tempted to check my 2020 TM - also from South Dakota - to see if it also has shims. But I am from the school that says "If it ain't broke, leave it alone."
For any who are interested, here is what the shims are all about. If you turn the toilet upside down, you will see that it sits on four stubby legs, shown in one of the photos in the link above. The legs are round and hollow. The toilet came from Thetford with a couple of what are called locator disks, maybe 1/4 inch thick and the same diameter as the inside of the legs. During initial installation, what is supposed to happen is that the toilet is set on the floor, positioned carefully, and the location of the front legs is marked on the floor. Then the toilet is removed temporarily, and the disks are screwed to the floor at the marked positions. Then the toilet is reset, with the front legs slipped over the disks. When the toilet is tightened down on the sewer flange, the disks keep the toilet from rotating or sliding out of position.
What has apparently happened in your case is that the assemblers at TM didn't understand the purpose of the disks, thought they were shims of some kind, and installed some bigger shims (bigger is better, right?) to avoid the fussy positioning and marking. The big "shims" don't prevent the toilet from moving or rotating - and you experienced the result.
I believe that the problem originated at the South Dakota factory. In the past, I have known the Tennessee factory to omit the disks altogether, but I've never seen the "shims" approach. Same result either way. I bet that Stephene's problem came from lack of locator disks, allowing the toilet to move, which ripped up the sewer connection. Fixing it won't be hard, but it will be annoying. The tutorial linked above tells you how.
Bill
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