Valve adjustment interval - Toyota Nation Forum : Toyota Car and Truck Forums

RyanM · 08-22-2005, 03:32 PM

How often (if at all) are valves supposed to be adjusted in my '97 3L camry? Some of the toyota dealers here in BC have suggested that i should not worry about it. They said that with 306,000km, i would have to replace my motor before my valves start giving me problems, and it wasnt worth the effort to adjust. I dont agree with this.

foompla · 08-22-2005, 03:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by RyanM

How often (if at all) are valves supposed to be adjusted in my '97 3L camry? Some of the toyota dealers here in BC have suggested that i should not worry about it. They said that with 306,000km, i would have to replace my motor before my valves start giving me problems, and it wasnt worth the effort to adjust. I dont agree with this.

i do agre with that. i think the interval is every 60k miles tho. its written on the sticker under the hood.

fredk · 08-22-2005, 05:35 PM

same here

azz419 · 08-22-2005, 06:35 PM

it's a s#$t of a job, and in our workshop, we have never had a camry with valve problems, even as much as 400,000km, so I personally wouldnt bother, the haynes / gregories manuals don't show the true extent of the job

Tom 2000 · 08-22-2005, 07:26 PM

I had it done once, but only one valve needed a new shim. That was on an gen2 with about 90K miles 8 years ago. It did'nt get very many oil changes by the original owner either.

It's an expensive job. Back then, the labor was $192. And that's just to take off the valve cover, measure it, really.

What's bad about a valve adjustment with engines like ours with shim type of adjustment, as opposed to a screw adjuster (with a rocker arm) is that, if the valve clearance is out of spec, you have to go back to the dealer and get the appropriate shims. You don't know what shims (shims come in many different thicknesses) you need until you have the valve cover open and clearances measured.

One shim at the dealer was like $9 back then. While I have yet to see an engine that needed 16 or 24 shims replaced, that would get mighty expensive.

In any case, the valve clearance rarely goes out of spec on Toyota engines. You can check it, but I wouldn't worry much about this...