Help with valve shims!

Haha You are an idiot. I said surface grinder not a bench grinder. Scroll up and read what I said to save yourself any further embarrassment.

 

right and you know the OP has a shop filled with all the tools to do this specialized work? your own word show you to be the idiot.

especially when you have to add words (bench) that I never said since you realized how dumb it sounds when you comments are repeated back to you

 

rusty, if you are a machinist or know one who has access to the specialized tools and can resize them for you, then that's a good plan. assuming of course you even have an option that one is too thick.

just think how much your engine costs vs the cost of waiting a day or two to get the right parts that will make your engine last another 300k miles, your decision naturally

 

Local head guy has one. But he's getting to the higher end of his 70s and hes hard to get ahold of. I called the closest dealer to me a few weeks back and the service guy didn't even know valve shims were a thing. Not sure the pricing on them either. Might go through LCE if they're more than 10 bucks a pop.

 

Regardless gotta get it done sooner than later.

 

Wow...are you drunk?

The OP mentioned a head guy grinding them down for him. Any competent head guy knows that they would need to be surface ground.

BTW this part of your post is my favorite...lol

 

yep, them service guys just do paperwork and talk to customers, most don't know a lot of the mechanical stuff as you would think. the parts dept guys are who you need to talk to.

 

I'm a retired machinist also (40 yrs) but still have a surface grinder at my disposal, I've done several shims
on Camry engines with perfect results, you can hand lap them on a piece of glass if you're anal about the finnish. Also converting MM to inches is very simple with a hand calculator (phone), if you have MM divide them by 25.4 to get ", if you have inches multiply by 25.4 to get MM.

 

How long can a 3.4l go before valve shimming becomes necessary?

 

on a properly maintained engine, it may never be necessary. it all depends on you

 

This is how I did mine on my 3rz 4cyl.,,, like the guy in this video with the wedge tool,,, I bought the plier set from blue point, I think it was, they suck,,, works on about 2/3 rds of the shims,, so I made a tool like the guy has in the video, the little wedge screwdriver,,,, I bought it off ebay for like 5 or 6 bucks and re bent it to work properly, the tool came with to much bend, it was a Kawasaki valve tool.
All I took out of the bend in the tool was a few degrees, a little straighter to be exact. worked like a champ and was able to just breeze through them, using feeler gauge to check initial setting then pulling the shim and using dial caliper to check thickness and the add or subtract to the size I wanted.

I was able to "swap" around a good number of them and then just ordered the others I needed. Just about all my exhaust were to tight, for me,,,, I like to keep it on the lose side myself

 

Hey , it could've been a 3.4 & the splendor of 4 cams & 24 valves... I thought about adjusting once , thought a little more, thought about all that adjusting & just couldn't justify it.......so I went & got a beer instead....

 

Haha, statement of the day right there. If I drank and had a 3.4 I'd probably do the same.

 

Define "properly maintained"

 

You are capable of grinding and polishing a 1" disk to tolerances of 1/1000th of a millimeter, in your garage? I call bullshit.

If its not bullshit, then i would welcome you to post up at least some pics of your work and equipment. Again, if its kosher, it would not be something anyone here would have at their disposal as it would have to be computer controlled to have those tolerances.

Regardless, even if you could, you would be the only person here with that capability. So everyone, please do not read what this man posted and think this is something you can DIY. You WILL damage your engine. Buy the right parts and do it the right way.


Tripping over a dollar to pick up a nickel.

 

The right parts:

http://www.cylinderheadsupply.com/valve-clearance-discs.html
http://www.cylinderheadsupply.com/valve-clearance-discs-28mm.html

http://www.silver-seal.com/category/shop.2_shop_essentials.import_tools/

@RustyVT can you confirm the shims are of 28mm or 34mm diameter? I read both sizes Yotatech, the larger ones for the 3RZ, but would like to confirm. The FSM has no reference.

If you get the master kit, you might be able to pass it around here with a deposit+fee per shim used.

 

The reason I ask it because I religiously change my oil and plugs/wires but I don't do the TB every 75k, I usually wait longer.

 

air filters, oil filters and regular oil changes are the key to keep engine wear to a minimum as well as driving like a grampa and not driving fast on interstates where the rpms get high

 

I never measured them Hindsight is 20/20

 

Using the picture up above with the shims and paper I came up with 28mm. So that's what I'm going with haha.