2002 Es300 V6 Fwd- Valve Shim/adjustment

[Andres11315]

Please answer if you only know and don't guess guys.

My car was making a ticking noise and most people told me it was a valve adjustment so I start doing it.

The car feels great and dont have a engine light on.

I am a Novice Mechanic

whoever owned this car
before me did not change the oil enough so there is a lot of carbon
deposits around that valve area. We are going to do an engine flush to
try and clear out whatever has built up inside. there was a good amount of carbon deposit in top and around this particular shim.

One of my valves gave me a clearance gap (when measuring
the shims with the feeler gauge) way out of range. The clearance range
was between 0.006-0.010, but we measured it at 0.056. The bucket that
holds this shim can be moved slightly up and down, so we belive the
problem is the spring (none of the other buckets move this way). We dont
want to change the spring because of a lack of expertise. We were
thinking of getting the thickest shim that Lexus offers, just to make
the gap smaller, but it would still be way out of range from what it
should be. Would you recommend getting a thicker shim made to reduce the
gap, or should we just get the thickest one from Lexus? Or just put
another one around the normal size and hope is dirty and after an engine
flush the spring will work normal.

I dont know if the spring is old and dont have that much strenght. Or just dirty

I don't want to put a thick shim from lexus 0.1299 and then the spring work and it will have barely any valve cleareance and mess up my engine or make the spring break and find a new engine.

Thank you for your time and help. I greatly appreciate it!