Hi,
I don't think you dad has worked on the pistons, rings and barrels of a
waterboxer.
The barrels are not just installed down over the pistons like they are
on an air-cooled.

well you ....but before the piston and barrel is in the engine..
tell him the pistons and barrels are removed as one piece by removing
the wrist pins through a hole in the block.
   One hole is behind the water pump.

what can be a bit more tricky is to reach the other wrist pin at the
forward end of the engine ..it has to be withdrawn though that same hole .

On every opposed four cylinder engine VW has even made..
air-cooled in all versions, and all waterboxers..
if those washers get out of place on the distributor driveshaft you can
be in a lot of trouble...they like to tilt and jam on the crankshaft
brass gear.   A very bad thing.

Scott

On 10/18/2013 3:24 PM, Tom Carchrae wrote:
> 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
>