Folks,
I know you are supposed to be able to use your fingers and a gentle prying with a flat blade screwdriver, but I am getting destroyed by these. I can get the one end in easily when the wrist pin isnt in the piston by squeezing the circlip into the hole and then rotating it up. But try as I might I cant get the circlip seated on the other side once the wrist pin is through the rod and piston. I broke down last night and bought a tool on eBay but am not sure it will work. I know Mahle pistons has a couple of tools for these, but I couldnt find the Mahle ones for sale online anywhere.
For reference, the wrist pin is 20mm in diameter and the circlips are 22mm. The tool I bought is I guess for 22mm circlips, but we'll see.
Instead of getting one end in the groove and working the other end in, try getting the whole clip inside the id and then push it down into the groove.
I always just used a small flathead screwdriver.
That little notch on the right is your savior.
Start the circlip on the left, and wedge it in around, with a small screwdriver levered over in that notch to keep it stable.
I wish I could post a video. The action is kind of like spiraling a piston ring on, but inverted.
Alright, so I came up with my own way of doing it. Luckily, I have a nice pair of Snap On long nose pliers that have a groove cut into the jaws as well as serated 'teeth' all the way down to the tip of the jaws. Basically I lay the circlip in the groove in the jaws and compress the circlip to fit into the hole in the piston. Sort of like this:
Once I have the circlip nearly compressed to the opening of the hole in the piston, I place my thumb over the cirlcip and the hole and release the the pliers. That gets the circlip partially seated in the hole and I can use the jaws of the pliers to push the remaining parts of the circlip into the hole. This methods worked 100% times easier than any thing else I tried.
Here are the handy dandy pliers that have gotten me out of a lot of tight spots over the years:
The little grooves in the jaws seem to have been made just for this purpose:
Never done it on an Audi, but for a Miata piston (which looks the same) the magic tool is one of the wrist pins out of the old junk motor. Put the two ends of the circlip into the groove, lay the old wrist pin on the bit that's sticking out and push. Click, done, it takes like 2 seconds to do something you've been cursing for 30 minutes with a pair of pliers.
Pete. (l33t FS) said:
I wish I could post a video. The action is kind of like spiraling a piston ring on, but inverted.
That's a great description of it.
