Tank valve modification

I apologize if this ends up being a double post, but the original post seems to have vanished into thin air.

Has anyone ever upgraded their tank valves to something other than the flimsy troublesome standard sliding gate valve? Maybe something like a ball valve with the nice handle on it? Looks like with some simple modification (at least on my system) I could make it work. Seems something like that might last a lot longer and be less of a problem overall.