7M-GTE Valve Clearance ????

[professorbob]

1987 Turbo 7mGTE/// 140,000miles
Transmission rebuilt and have the engine out of the car and on a stand.
Going back together with engine after having manifold resurfaced and installing new exhaust gasket and timing belt, Idler,spring and new hoses.
Engine is in excellent condition with no internal buildup. has about 140,000/
Checked the valve clearance and non are out of speck, but a couple are very close to the max... cannot slip the next larger gauge between the cam and disk. Engine had no excessive valve noise on shutdown.
Thoughts on whether I should go ahead and replace the clearance shims.
Can one make a homemade tool to replace the factory special tool for removal of the disk. If so where would I get a design.
Any Idea what the shims cost. Are there aftermarket shims? and are they OK.

Thanks for your thoughts.
Prof

[cre]

Please don't post in all bold.. it's obnoxious and harder to read for most people.

Shims are easy enough to replace. I do not recommend trying to replace them with any tool other than one made specifically for the job; It's not worth the risk of scoring the cam lobe to save a little time to avoid just pulling the cam out (especially if you'll already have the timing belt off).

There is a company who makes aftermarket shims and there's a Yamaha motorcycle engine which uses shims in the same size that USED to be cheaper; I say USED to be as I've read some people have in a the past couple years found them to be more expensive than Toyota's. The aftermarket manufacturer really was targeting people in need of over-sized shims. I would just go with Toyota unless you need to replace a lot of them.

It's "spec", BTW; "Speck" is dirt.

[professorbob]

Sorry about the bold. And the Speck;-) Not intentional.
Decided to not do any shim replacement. The tolerances were just at the max i.e. .330 etc. Thanks for your input.
Prof

[cre]

The bold thing is bothersome, but I'm just razzing you about the spec thing.

It took me quite a while to get around to reshimming my last 7M. Seriously, if you're going to have the timing belt off do the worst side at least... it's not a difficult project. You're right, the max specified clearance isn't too bad; Still, you will be halfway to getting the job done already.