180 3pt lift cyinder

The lift cylinders have been leaking on my 180. The left side is just a couple of drops here and there. The right side was really bad, and would spit out quite a bit when raised up for the first time after sitting more than an hour or so. The only thing I'm running on it in the next several weeks is a rather light finish mower. So I pulled the cylinder off and plugged the hose so I could investigate the problem. I have the early style rams with the smaller diameter rod. Someone has definitely been inside the cylinder before. It appears to have been taken apart, and reassembled with a hammer and punch, rather than a spanner wrench. I was actually able to disassemble the entire thing with no tools, nothing was tight. I've located repair kits for it online, as the packing rings are pretty rough, but the real issue is that the bore has some rust pitting. Its not really that deep, I think I could clean it up with a cylinder hone in a drill. My question is whether the new packing can handle a few extra thousandths, and how I would go about assembling everything with out chewing up the new packing on the threads for the top cap. It seems like it would be better to assemble it and tighten it up with the piston down in the bore, but how would you keep the bottom half of the piston from turning?

Thanks
Brett

Thanks for the reply. That's kind of what I was thinking. I'll get a kit ordered and see how it goes.

Brett