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