Shouldn't be that hard.
practice first on your spare distributor.

Hard to say without knowing your level of techical expertise.
Are you used to working on small mechaisms with circlips and such ?

I stronly urge all vanagon owners who work on their vans to have 'known good
spare units' ...
for everything ...
ecu, AFM, igniter, distributor, throttle body , fuel pump, etc etc.
It makes troubleshooting and self-rescue a whole lot easier.

and if you somehow damage your spare unit working on it, your van is not
'just dead' like it would be if you do that to your 'only; distributor.
and sometimes you can make one good one out of two not-quite-right ones,
etc.

Heck...I even had that happen recently with a 1.9 diesel head.
I was worried about the used head I had even being usable.
I searched for months for a good used AAZ head, or an affordable new or
rebuilt one.
And the choices where not that great - made in china etc.
Finally I got a bare new head ............and it  was not 'absolutely
perfect' right out of the box either ...( 3 issues on it actually .....and
that is totally 100 % new new new right out of the box - the price was right
though )
BUT ..
once I had that back-up head I was very happy to get my old one resurfaced
.......
and then it looked just fine anyway ,
my point is .....when you have at least 'some other' part for a back up
.......
that shifts things nicely in your favor.
Thne you don't  have everyting riding on just that one distributor, or
whathaveyou.
And a spare distributor takes up no room at all anyway in your parts stash.

just practical about stuff like this,
Scott
----- Original Message -----
From: "B Feddish" <bfeddish@NETREACH.NET>
To: <vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM>
Sent: Tuesday, April 20, 2010 7:28 AM
Subject: Replacing the vacuum advance unit

> How hard is it to replace the vacuum advance in a distributer unit for a
> 1.9? I have an appt scheduled to do this but if it is easy I'll save my
> money.
>
>
>
> The Bentley just shows an exploded diagram and no description and I cannot
> find anything in the archives on replacing it.
>
>
>
> Thanks,
>
> Bryan