T350 Shim Removal

[martin996uk]

Hello all. Some help needed please. I’ve checked all the valve clearances on my T350 and every single one is out of tolerance. So I’ve ordered a shim kit. I’ve taken out almost all of the shims and measured them whilst I wait for the shim kit to arrive. I used the method of levering the follower to the side horizontally and then getting the shim out with a strong magnet. This method is ok unless you need to get the shim out 4 and 5, 8 and 9 and 12 on the inlet side. And 12 on the exhaust side. How on earth do you get the shims out of these ones? You can’t slide the follower far enough to the left/right in order to get the shim out. Do you have to somehow compress the vertical valve spring? If so, I can’t see a way of doing that without damaging the cam lobe. What would you use for leverage with a small pry bar? I’m baffled. Any help would be greatly appreciated. And pictures would be even better.

[Basil Brush]

I'm looking forward to hearing the right way to do this.

I had to do it recently and compressed the spring by turning the engine, used a large allen key clamped with a piece of steel strip between 2 of the cam cover bolt holes to hold it down and then turned the engine to move the cam lobe so I could lift the follower to remove the shim. It definitely wasn't the most efficient method but meant I could use 2 hands to get the shim.

[martin996uk]

Thanks for your help, Marcus. I can’t quite picture in my head what you’ve done with the large Allen key and the steel strips.

[twinreal]

The photos in this thread of german tvr forum should help: http://tvr-forum.de/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4738&...

I do it this way and it works fine.

[martin996uk]

Thanks for that, Twinreal. That’s giving me a better idea of what I have to do. Is that small spanner in the picture between the top of spring plate and the follower?

[martin996uk]

I’ve just tried it, Twinreal. It was a lot easier than I expected it to be. Thanks for your help.

[martin996uk]

Here’s how I managed to do number 12 shim on the inlet side. Much easier when you have two hands to get the shim back in.