Tom W

Good post and highlight the part about holding the throttle open makes a big difference.

Not sure if this applies to yours but mine the blower runs first for a min or more then the burner lights something about a sail switch that has to sense air flow, I hardly ever use it uses to much gas and battery plus very noisy.

Good point about the air bags raising the rear confusing the valve

Even the latest and greatest, needs a little more info on the AC

I have a 9000 BTU roof unit and it barely does the job upper nineties and 100

Bon Ami I heard that story years ago, and tried it, you will be putting more than rings in it, it will mess up everything. You may have heard of dusting a eng Air filter with a hole in it in a dirty environment or not seated properly, Thats what happens with Bon Ami.

Sounds like you are on the right track, I added a vacume gauge and tack, sometimes it could be the fan clutch or locking torque converter giving one the fell of something changing. I had the heads off and wouldn't wish that on anyone with the eng in the veh. How did you get several shims out with out removing the cams, my experience was if a shim was removed it couldn't be rotated without the the cam hitting the side of the bucket without the shim in?, I had one tight and used plate glass and valve grinding compound to take it down, toyota price is $13 for one shim. Whats BTW? Tom

Derek up north, mentioned the CCW rotation wouldn't that be fun driving 1low gear all day or driving backwards with 4 gears

I've done mine and the info I got was its a non interference, But if it breaks and your about 4000rpm who knows what could happen. I did the crank and cam seals & water pump same time.

Their's nothing different about doing the adj just need a tool to compress the buckets or lifters to remove the shim if they were to tight it would be a thinner shim The tool is not expensive can be found on line. There is a couple hrs labor the remove the stuff on top to get to the valve covers.The shims are pricy from Toyota most of them will be in spec's anyway,when a shim is removed don't turn eng over the Cam will hit the side of the bucket.

You need a digital volt meter, so you know what's going on, the converter mine has a adjustment for the charging rate but yours shouldn't have changed are all the cells topped out with water sometimes cells with low water will cause over a charging condition. Yours should have a solinod to allow the alternator to charge it with Eng running. Volt meter!!!!!! it doesn't have to be a expensive one.

Just get a after market from auto parts store, that's what I did, I was wondering is it in over drive or not? is it the fan clutch making the extra noise? or the lockup converter locked or not now I know and on grades how much am I winding it up.

Just another thought we had a older ford with computer controlled carb & distributor would have been $$$ to fix, used a older point type distributor,coil,balast resister,and a bypass around the resister for starting and carb , it ran better then I had for years.

If these are the type that have pull rings to open them,take the rings off and push the valve out thru the bottom and replace the O rings.

A lot better having a little valve noise then too tight.Too tight will burn valves.