Ring compressor

The pictures explain.  The clamps have very strong springs.  The bands are from hose clamps - heavier gauge.  Tested them with the head (currently) on the bench and they work very well.
 
 
 
 
 
 

Interesting. The idea is to then have 6 of these when lowering the head onto the pistons?

If I have to make 4 more - no problem but I think I can do the assembly 2 cyl,'s at a time.

The trick is to have a similarly adept friend to feed the rings into the bottom of the liners with their fingers simultaneously with yourself doing the same on the other of the two pistons as the block's lowered gradually   But yes, the process is fraught with stress 

I considered "stuffing by hand"  for about 10 seconds!   Not too bad when the jugs are upside down on the bench. The "rounded"  "Cruizinimage" rings wouldn't be an issue.  These IMD rings have VERY sharp edges !  The compressors will let me keep my finger-nails and finger-tips.
Currently: shimming..... on the bench.  A lot easier at this stage.  I'll need to order some new sizes but the machine-shop was good to their word.  Lots of room for shims !. 

Thanks for sharing this brilliant idea Scotch.

I really struggled wih mine. I even bought some commercially available ring compressors but they just didn't work. They either just came off or deformed when trying to comress the rings.

I broke one of my rings at the time (Crusin Imafge) and I had to buy a complete set of 6 as they wouldn't sell individually at the time!  A coupel of my spare ring sets have gone to other owners witht he same problem.

I still keep an eye out for genuine ones on evil-bay but they are never complete and always way too expensive.

Hopefully I will never need these again but will keep it in mind just in case