Doublebase

can you lift the lower control arms with a floor jack, to raise it up high enough to get the bolt through the strut?

I find when working with suspension all bets are off. You have to loosen things, lift things up, pull things down, wiggle the crap out of something to get a bolt to go through. But it’s all doable. Remember that. Just be safe. But try the lifting the bottom up instead if forcing the top down.

MidwestLS

Hi, Doublechase. Good tip. This morning I took the outer tie rod off the knuckle. That gave the room needed to completely remove the lower shock mount from the knuckle. From there it was easy to remove the lower mount from the shock, than take the spring bolts off and maneuver the shock and spring out of the fender well. You of course have to remove the brake sensor from the shock body first. However, I didn’t have to remove anything else - didn’t take the caliper and rotor off and didn’t remove the upper control arm bolts. Alignment shouldn’t be affected by just taking the outer tie rod off the knuckle, I think.

When putting the spring and new shock back in, loosely bolt the top mount, then bolt the lower mount to the shock body. From there, I used my body weight on the caliper to pull the upper control arms down slightly. A few bounces on the caliper and the lower mount stud went back in the knuckle easily. Once I was sure it was past the shoulder in the bushing sleeve I tapped it the rest of the way in with a dead blow hammer. Sometimes a job that fights you one day can be finished if you leave it alone a while, cool off and come back to it.