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I plan to check valve clearance on my Toyota Camry 1994 when I got my feeler gage. I hired a mechanic to do a head gasket and he suspect he didn't put it back right.

 

they are not adjustable, they just have shims, they never need it anyway. My dad is a mechanic and people all the time insist on having their valves checked and they are always perfect unless they have been abused. Im talking about around 1988 and newer.

 

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That is what I typically do all the time. Use that front cross member to jack it up (yep, right on that round nub in the center) and then get a couple jack stands under the front jack point/circles and then pull the jack out so you have clear access und the center of the car.

In fact, I do the same for brakes and even did the same when I did struts too. Creature of habit, I guess.

 

There's a cross-member, between the subframes, and just behind the little air dam and forward of the engine. It has a round "knob" in the bottom center of it. Is this what you are referring to? Have you, or anyone else with a 4th Gen. reading this post, ever safely jacked their Camry up at this point?

I have. I've lifted the back too - both sides at once, though I forget were.
I've also lifted the entire side at once, but from the "frame rail", not the point the manual says to use the supplied jack on.

Though for what you are doing, I'd lift the front, support it, then the back and support it.

 

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There's a cross-member, between the subframes, and just behind the little air dam and forward of the engine. It has a round "knob" in the bottom center of it. Is this what you are referring to? Have you, or anyone else with a 4th Gen. reading this post, ever safely jacked their Camry up at this point?

If I have to lift my car high enough to use jack stands, and not my usual 10X12" blocks of wood, that's where I do it. Exhaust ripped apart on me on my drive home a few years ago, when I hit a flooded part of the highway (about a foot and a half of water doing 80KM/h), they closed that portion of the highway 15 mins later. A little too late to save my exhaust.

I get the car home and in the garage (tired from work), block the rear wheels so if the car rolls back/forward, it won't come off the jack. Brain fart... I start jacking it up at the front right lift point to have a look to see how bad things are. Before, I realize what I'm doing, I get that sickening sound of folding metal, and the car while on the jack, drops about an inch. (You ever think to yourself {I may have said it out loud}, "You're a F**king idiot!"?) Yeah, I did that...

 

The valve adjustment is something thats never done. These engines are so reliable b/c of their head design. If your getting a loud valve tick then get it checked out, if not I wouldn't touch it.

 

There is a jacking spot on the center front of the cradle that you can use to lift the front up then put stands on the sides. Not sure about the rear.