[Vwdiesel] valve shims & pliers

[dennis pantazis]

greetings all:

today was a cold day in chicago! worked on the car for a good bit. making
some headway on getting my 85 golf 1.6NA back on the road. todays's task was
valve adjustment and shims.

biggest triumph was using a pair of $8 hardware store outside calipers in
place of the vw special tool to remove the shims. i usually never buy
general branded merchandise, but when i saw them hanging at the hardware
store, i thought for the price why not. and they worked! i had to file the
end of the jaws a bit to make it narrower to fit the slot, and if i
tightened them up too much they would start to spring, but after the first
2-3 i figured it out enough to make short work of it.

a couple of questions to those in the know-

1. order of valves: i looked in bentley but could not find a diagram or
description for order of valves. i think i figured it out by lookig at the
manifolds, but if someone could check out my work, i would appreciate it.
order of valves looking at engine, #1 on left- e for exhaust and i for
intake.

cyl    1    2    3    4
valve e i  e i  i e  i e

2. valve shims: the shims are worn like a donut, center is high, etched shim
thickenss is readable. i mic'd both outer worn surface and center which was
not worn to verify the original thickness. so my quandry is this, what
thikness do i base my new shim on, the center or the edge where it is worn?
i would assume the outer which is where the shim bears against the keeper.

3. rate of wear: this has me a bit concerned. a couple of my shims are thin,
3.35 mm on the intake valves. for now, they are in spec, but on the low side
of the range (0.007" and 0.008"). i assume that my valves are receeding like
all valves do. how long before i run out of shim and need to do a valve job?
i realize that this is sort of a rhetorical question, but i ask others with
more experience with these engines how often did they find that they had to
change shims? i know i have to check yearly or 15k miles, that is a check,
not a replacement guideline. did you change shims every 15k miles?

thanks in advance

dennis