Yesterday while I had the valve cover off and was measuring valve clearance, I attempted to compress a valve with a flat-blade screwdriver to test how easy it might be to remove the shims when the time comes.
I did not want to scratch anything, so I was being very gentle. I wasn't able to compress the valve doing this.
How much force is usually required to compress the valve in order to remove the shim? Should I be using a large flat blade screwdriver as a lever, wedged under the cam to push it down? From the Haynes manual it appeared that all I needed to do was gently push down on the valve with the screwdriver -- but apparantly this is not the case.
Thanks. JB