Originally Posted by oldskewel

Sorry I'm not too clear on what's going on here, but ...

For example, is that the old VR with the severely cracked off top, and you're installing a completely new one, just photo'ing that one for convenience?

On the idea to drill a hole through the top, use a paperclip to hold the brushes in, then reseal the hole when done ... yes, that's great. If you ARE talking about using that broken-top VR, then obviously no need to drill a hole; and probably something to cover / fix the hole in the shield would be good.

On different brush holder designs, I've found that a simple small zip tie can hold the brushes retracted while installing over the slip rings, and then the zip tie can pull out easily. I expect when installed in a factory, they use some special purpose implementation of this idea - similar for example to the little plastic pull tabs that electronic devices often have to make sure the battery is not connected prior to its unpackaging and first use. With your design, that may be tougher or less possible than the alternatives.

The trick I used on my Valeo 120A on my 3.0i looks like it should apply to yours, so here it is:

The yellow arrow from AndrewWynn's pic shows where the plastic cylindrical shell attaches. Clear how it might slide, but in my case it was NOT possible to simply slide it off while installing. And if it were possible to carefully get past the locking barbs and get it off, you would not be able to reinstall it once the brushes were installed and touching the slip rings, since the brushes go through the rectangular openings in it.

But it did have enough free play in it to shift it up slightly.

So I slid it as far as it would go in that direction (aligned with the rotor axis) to the point where the brushes could be one-at-a-time pressed back with a screwdriver and tucked under that plastic edge, holding them from popping out.

I needed to keep constant pressure on the plastic shell in this position, displacing it by a mm or two, otherwise it would just shift back and the two spring loaded brushes would pop out.

But after just a little trial and error, keeping pressure on it, I could slip it over the slip rings, then let the plastic shield return to its rest state, letting the brushes pop into position against the slip rings.