Fellow Vanagon Nuts,

  (I sent this message earlier but it was returned but here goes again, sorry
for taking up the bandwidth with a repeat.)

         I purchased an '84 Vanagon 1.9L engine recently.  It had developed the
inevitable head gasket leak at 73,000 miles and the owner disassembled it
hoping to fix it himself but got cold feet and sold it to me.  Unfortunately,
he extracted the cylinder sleeves for some reason.

    My question is this:  is there a way to re-install the cylinder sleeves
over the pistons without either taking the rods loose from the crankshaft or
the pistons from the rods?  Is there a ring compressor (or has anyone
improvised something) that will get into that small space and facilitate the
re-installation of the cylinders and heads without further disturbance of the
pistons and rods?

Thanks for your assistance.

Russell Gunter
Woodbridge, VA