Cleaning and Adjusting Valves

So I'm attempting to clean up the valves and get them ready to adjust.
I'm facing a bunch of sludge and muck, can someone suggest a good method for cleaning the valves?
And is there a link to how adjust the valves?
After I clean the valves I'm going pull the oil pan and clean that out nest.
Thanks.

Any process that cleans all the sludge and muck off the top of the engine will tend to make at least some of it run into the bottom of the engine. This can cause the oil pump pickup to become plugged, starving the engine of oil.

You can plug off the oil drain holes and scrape, poke and rub off the gunk.
After doing that, you can run the engine with a quart or 2 of ATF, which is a light weight oil with a LOT of detergent. This can cause the issue mentioned.

You can run the engine (without load - just sitting not driving) with a quart of engine flush, kerosine, or a cup of carb cleaner in the crankcase. It also can cause big clumps of gunk to clog the pickup.

You can disassemble the entire engine and clean the parts, then reassemble. this is a bunch of time and money, and tends to evolve into a complete rebuild.

Which engine do you have? If it's a 200, there are a bunch of articles on this. Just google "Ford 200 valve adjustment".

Thanks for the suggestions.
It's 1966 240C.I.
I'm gonna scrape and clean, run engine flush, drain, refill with fresh oil, run and drain, change filter, pull oil pan, clean and possibly pull the oil pump and clean.
I just got my shop manual from 66 so I now have a guide.

I used the engine flush years ago- found it worked good=bad thing was it makes all the seals go to heck- leak oil & basically deteriorates all the rubber parts it gets in contact with . I had to rebuild the engine anyways . Never again will I ever use any thing like that=

Like the rest as far as cleaning advice,HOWEVER as easy as that head is to R&R I would have a valve job done at the same time insuring that the head gasket is good as well as knowing the valves are all sealing.
IF not, then there are two ways to adjust you're valves of which one of them you cannot do your self. When the engine has NON ADJUSTABLE rocker arms the factory and or the machine shop doing the valve job?? use a GO/NO GAUGE to measure the valve tip height. (note: not assembled) The gauge is a round piece of tubing that goes over the valve and sits on the spring seat. It has a notch cut on the top of about .125 depth and the machinist grinds the tip of that valve if needed to bring the tip of the valve down into that notched measured height. This designed to supposedly set the plunger in the hydraulic lifters range of being able to adjust itself. IF the tip of the valve is too high or to low the valve will either be noisy or never fully seat. The hydraulic lifter has only a high or low tolerance hence the go/no go gauge. NOTE: after this height is set, then the proper shims are used to set the proper spring height and matching spring tension. SO my point with this is more than likely this is something you cannot do. The problem with this method is it is really not accurate AT ALL as it does not account for camshaft lobe wear or lifter wear, and or milling the head to make it flat again. These all affect the lifters plunger depth. If the head had been milled before, you would not know it and if you have it done again then it makes it even harder to get correct. When a vale job is done grinding the vale moves the tip up in height as well if the seat is ground it also moves the tip height up.
THE ONLY way you can put the valve height EXACTLY PERFECT is to use an adjustable rocker arm assembly from say an early 144. Then you can adjust them perfectly. I just sold my last set for a hot little 200 and its perfect. You can purchase adjustable rockers and put them on you're shaft or just buy a new shaft also and convert yours to adjustable. As a former automotive machine shop owner I tell every one to go to adjustable rockers as then you can set them where they NEED TO BE, NOT where I am guessing they should be using non adjustable rockers.
Vic/SoCal~~~~~~~~~OLD SKOOL