I've changed plain old shocks on my Dodge truck before, and a fair share of wrenching here and there.. I can change out my worn-out OEM struts with 96k on them myself can't I? I've read the how-to and looks straight-forward, but what is a BUMP STOP and why do I want to cut it?

I can't find the info on that..

I'm thinking of KYB GR-2 for my standard height ride springs, these ok?

 

Get hurt?

I guess a spring could shoot into you or the car could crush you.

 

You want to cut the bump stop because when you go lower, you will closer to it. There will be more of a chance you hit it often.

If you are staying at stock height don't worry about them.

 

Non-sense. I did my struts for the first time and it was less scary than the horror stories on this forum.

Now, the safe way to do it is put the strut with spring on the floor with the hat pointing away from u. Then place the compressors right opposite to each other and start compressing evenly and you will observe the pressure on the hat getting relieved. Once the spring is fully compressed remove the hat bolt and off comes out the strut.!!!

Trust me it is easy, get the compressors with lock pins from Autozone and you won't go wrong!!

 

Thanks for the tips, I saw one of the pictures showed what I know now to be a lockpin.

At first I thought it was something that I wouldn't be able to do, but looking at the how-to, not that hard at all. Main thing it seems is to line up the ends of the springs and the tophat and such.

I'll need some new boots mine are disintegrated and basically hanging in pieces. I see Advance sells TRW for my car for 16 for each side.

Might as well replace the strut bearing while I'm at it, eh?

 

Ok, so I understand that to keep a straight steering wheel and all, I will most likely need an alignment. That's ok since it's been about 2 years anyway and I just got some new tires (Michelin XGT-v4).

The problem is I'm going to have to do one set (front or back) then wait about a month for the $$ to do the other.. Since the backs are not alignable?? (correct me here?), I could still drive the car with no real problems by doing the backs first, right? Then when I replace the fronts in a month or so, I could then worry about the alignment..


Am I thinking straight here?