i feel ya on the shims. it was one of the more frustrating parts of my build getting the right ones i needed. luckily someone came through on here and sold me a bag of them. only had to buy three new from toyota. good luck with the rest of it.
IBoughtASupra;1509550 said:I built a 7M head myself. Make sure you do it at room temperature or close to it. Also, you will have to torque the caps down and then check the clearance. Also, rotate the cams a full turn so all the valves open because sometimes the shims are not in all the way or oil is taking up space, doing this eliminates those problems.
I did this after grinding my valves with the permatex valve grinding paste, which is the "fine" grade and makes the job a whole lot longer, and I measured everything meticulously. When we started my engine, and reved and it let come back to idle, no rattling noises. Trust me, it is very easy to get frustrated when doing this but when you start it up and have no noise, you will realize that it was all worth it. PM me for any questions.
IBoughtASupra;1511532 said:I made the specs on mine in the middle of all the specs. Eight thou on the Intake and Ten Thou on the Exhaust. I have an Excel worksheet that does all the work for you. I can E-Mail the worksheet to you if you want, just PM me your E-Mail. It is avaible on the forums here but just incase if you can't find it. On here it is in thou but I converted it to MM since when I ordered shims from GoodSon Engine Builders, it is easier to find the sizes in MM because that is how they list them.
All my shims were new but I had to grind a few of them still to get them to the exact point where I wanted it. A tip, if you are grinding the shims, drop it in water at room temperature so you can get it close to its original size.