[Vwdiesel] Valve Adjustment

[Val Christian]

There are a multitude of techniques which help get the shims out.
A custom made blowgun, with a fine metal point helps lift the shim.
Needle nose pliers are good at then grabbing it and pulling it out.

The depressor and shim pliers sold by KD Tools are junk.  The depressor
is laminated soft sheet metal, and was aparently made for cylinder heads
I never worked on.  It was too narrow, and barely had enough metal to
depress the valve.  Eventually (adjusting the third head) the rivets
which held the laminations together, started flaking off metal.  I made
something which worked marginally better, but lasted longer.  The best
depressor I ever saw was a single piece tool which cam-ed the valves down,
and had the correct inter-valve spacing.  Nice tool, but I never got one.
It was beefy, but cost 3X the KD set.

The KD shim pliers were flimsy and never really got a good enough grip on
the shims...hence the compressed air technique.

I know more than one person who decided to measure all the valves, and then
loosen the cam, and do the shims that way.  More work, but if you don't
have a depressor, it's an alternative.






...
> You also need the depressor tool.  I did it once without it.  The next
> time I tried it I couldn't see it being worth even trying without the
> proper tool!  Compressed air and/or a small screwdriver or two works
> almost as good and sometimes better than the shim pliers.  Depressor
> and pliers are about $45 to $50 each.
>   You'll usually end up swapping a few of the shims around in the head
> itself.
> Usually only a couple new/used ones are needed.  :)  It almost pays to
> keep a record of what's in there, in the glove box.  :)