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Date:         Fri, 18 Oct 2013 21:18:25 -0500
Reply-To:     Jim Felder <jim.felder@GMAIL.COM>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Jim Felder <jim.felder@GMAIL.COM>
Subject:      Re: off with her heads
Comments: To: Alistair Bell <albell@shaw.ca>
In-Reply-To:  <72C21B61-8C12-4E02-BE4D-05C0DA65E71F@shaw.ca>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

I would probably do it that way next time. Last time, I put the piston in the cylinder with the wrist pin retainer in the far end side of the piston since it could not be installed after the wrist pin was in place. I mated the piston to the rod, not too hard. Of course you are working like orthoscopic surgery through the hole available to you after you remove the metal water pipe (this on the passenger side rear piston). I could barely get the pin started into the piston and then use a long brass drift to drive it in with taps from a flat steel plate. There is not enough room to swing even a small hammer between the back of the head and the muffler, hence the steel plate as a hammer. Anway, the pin finally drove home against the clip I had already installed in the piston, and then I set the other clip in place with a really long pair of pliers and a couple of dozen attempts having it spring off in all directions and having to fish it out of the water jacket of the block with a magnet on a dowel half the time.

Oh, and I skipped the fun part of getting the wrist pin out. I didn't want to lay into it with the force of an inertia puller, so I held a nut between the far side of the piston and the barrel of the next cylinder and ran a piece of all thread into it. The nut has to be smaller than the hole through the piston but larger than the hole through the wrist pin. From that I set up some nuts and washers sticking out of the water jacket hole and ran another bolt down on the all thread to pull the pin out. All in all it was a challenging fun week. Not.

As I mentioned earlier, I will pull the engine next time before I go through this again.

Jim

On Fri, Oct 18, 2013 at 9:03 PM, Alistair Bell <albell@shaw.ca> wrote:

> I did it with a cut down compressor. Slim so it still could fit between > cylinders and block. > > Was a pain, but do able. > > Alistair > > > > > On Oct 18, 2013, at 5:46 PM, Stuart MacMillan <stuartmacm@GMAIL.COM> > wrote: > > > > Yes, I'd like to know how you gurus do this without the special VW ring > > compressing tool shown in the Bentley! Install the piston in the sleeve > and > > then attach the assembly to the rod? This is another reason I've not > > bothered with rebuilding a WBX, but I am curious. > > > > Stuart > > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: Vanagon Mailing List [mailto:vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com] On Behalf > Of > > Tom Carchrae > > Sent: Friday, October 18, 2013 3:24 PM > > To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM > > Subject: Re: off with her heads > > > > Thanks Dennis & Jim. I had wondered about how hard it actually would be > > to put the piston rings back on. I told my dad, who'd done it with his > > aircooled back in the day, and he said, what is the big deal, just pull > the > > sleeve off. Not that I don't trust him, but I think his last bus was > > around the time I was born (I've seen pics of my pregnant mom helping to > > lift out the engine by sitting on a board). He thought it was a good > idea > > to pull them off and you could perhaps get some more life/compression by > > changing the piston rings. And yeah, I've seen a few videos on that > piston > > clip and that looks like a horror. > > > > Jim; you mentioned the sledge earlier - I have a 50lb one in the > woodshed, > > dangerously close to the van. I just look at it and mutter, please don't > > let it come to that! > > > > Scott/Stuart - thanks for the warnings. So far, I'm loving the flat > engine > > layout, but I didn't know that the distributor could drop parts down like > > that. Yeargh. > > > > Tom >


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