1992 toyota 1HZ valve shims Question

Interesting comment on Toyota. I went to a large dealer's spare parts to buy some shims, and they had none in stock. He suggested I go in to the workshop and ask if they had any used ones. You would think there would be a bucket of them, they had none. I ended up going to a 3rd party supplier, 'precision shims' for the few I needed. (this was around 5 years ago).

B1B2
It is not so much a comment but a situation of reality. Many many Toyotas have never had their valve clearances looked at. Because the 4 valve system means less mass in each valve and together with far better metallurgy than in the past, most dealerships just don't check them because they consider the rate of valve clearance degredation to be low. That then brings about the situation where at an interval or a bit past it at service time, the mechanics regard it was done or dismiss it as not being necessary. Each successive mechanic to touch the vehicle then presumes it has been perviously done and again doesn't bother to check. I have had contact with people who checked theirs at near 300,000 km and found they were the first to ever have the cam cover off the engine. Yes they are reliable, but there is a limit, and correct clearance does provide performance and economy as designed. It is to keep inflow and exit of air and exhaust at the optimum and keep all gas flows in sequence and phase tune with each other.

Not checking valve clearances is an industry wide issue of failure to perform proper servicing. Customers won't know will they?

B1B2

It does not surprise me that the mechanics did not have any old shims. I checked the clearances on my 03 diesel Hilux for the first time at 135,000ks. It needed one new shim and it was the next size to the original. The wear rate is next to nothing.

From my experience while working for new car dealers, they don't see many high mileage cars. A car coming in for a routine service with 135,000 on the speedo like mine is rare sight. They could check the valve clearances on every service and still not end up with a box of old shims.

As another example, my daughter has a little Mitsubishi hatchback. Its first valve clearance check is at 80,000 ks. I did not know if it had shims or not so I asked the service adviser at the local dealer. She did not know so she walked out into the workshop and asked a mechanic. I could see them through a large glass window. She returned and said they have shims but the mechanic said they have yet to find one that needed adjusting. I doubt if they had any old shims either.

Thanks all for your replies, I don't think my valves have ever been checked or re shimmed, all 12 shims where outside of spec my lowest Inlet valve was reading 0.051 and the highest was 0.102 (Specs say should be 0.15-0.25)

The Exhaust valves were not much better largest clearance was 0.298 and the lowest was 0.198 and (Specs are 0.35-0.45) With that combination of out of whack shims I had to purchase 11 as only 1 could be re used.

I went to Toyota and they only had 4 of the ones I needed lol, ended up going to an engine rebuilder to get the rest.

Cheers

I asked the Son of my Tojo dealer , He finished his apprenticeship as a mechanic / service technician 2 years ago ...his answer to my question of 'shims' was "what's a shim" .....says it all doesn't it .....

Good to know you got it all sorted.