Kenny,

Assuming the limit stop has a common gap of 1/8" on either side, you're looking at a maximum difference of 1/4". If someone is designing piping systems so their shoes can't handle 1/4" extra movement w/o falling off the steel, they need to be slapped.

Back to the original question - one thing that needs to be considered with your shoe that overtraveled and fell off: when that system cools down, it's going to pull like hell on that beam that was supporting it. As it probably was not braced to be an anchor location, you are liable to have torqued the beam something nasty.

I would be extremely leary of doing any kind of work involving Caesar and B31.3 to justify the continued use of that shoe and steel. Especially if you know that system has already gone through a cool down cycle. If the system heated up for the first time and the shoe has fallen off, but not yet contracted, you will still have a pretty good chance to jack up the line and modify the steel so that the shoe sits properly again.