Shocks with no lift … alignment still needed?

Ordered some 4600s to replace my OEM shocks. When I did the shocks on my Ranger no alignment was needed, but it wasn’t 4WD.

 

As long as you're sure there's no chance in ride height, no alignment should be needed.

 

Yes, it's advisable to do so. You are loosing lower control arms bolts. Mark came bolt positions.

 

Depends how you go about the install. If you just pop the upper ball joint off to get the coilover out (easiest way), you should be fine. If you touch the lower control arm alignement tabs, then it would be advised to get aligned.

 

In what world do you need to loosen the lca bolts to do a replacement? Just pop the castle nut on the uca.....

 

Hmm, have a link to any pics or a YouTube video?

 

Not off hand. There isn't much to it if you're just doing shocks.

 

Awesome, thanks! Now I just need the weather to warm up …

 

Loosen circled nut. Leave nut on tap the spindle where the ball joints seats and up on the ball joints nut. Once ball joints is free from the spindle you can lift the uca "it will be a bit stiff due to the bushings or it will spring up a bit once the nut is removed depending on what position it was torqued in"
You will need to remove the sway bar end link from the spindle aswell. Not pictured here as mine is in the bin.
And presto you have not tweaked any alignment specs. I still recommend atlesst checking it after any suspension work but this would reduce the odds of needing one.

 

Thanks!

 

I'd do it regardless....Might increase the life of your tires.

 

It shouldn’t change anything as long as you’re not touching any of the adjustments. Especially if you are doing like for like with no lift.

That being said, how many miles are you at and when was your last alignment?

 

130K total, tires have 20K on them, it was aligned then.

 

If it drives fine afterward, I wouldn’t bother with an alignment. The OEM fit shocks shouldn’t affect your alignment. They arare designed to be plug-n-play. I also think people worry too much about tire wear due to bad alignment.

I get alignments if:

- the vehicle pulls hard one way or the other
- it drives squirrelly
- I changed the ride height significantly by or otherwise changed the geometry via suspension modifications.

 

If you use the vehicle as the spring compressor, you need to loosen the cam bolts so the LCA can swing down freely.

 

This sounds like 3x the work than having the tool for the job. I'm going with a hard pass on this idea. Used this method on vw's back in the day it works but on these trucks wouldn't recommend it.

 

A good quality compressor isn’t as easy to come by as parts store cheap ones. Randomly saw this after I posted this and this is not a cheap compressor:




No dog in the fight, but either take some good measurements before the swap and after driving for a week to see if the ride height changed or an angle finder on a flat surface of the control arms or spindle zeroed on the frame to note if any angle changes occurs from change in ride height. Just do all the measurements in the same spot you mark in your driveway / garage with steering wheel clocked the same in each case.

 

Alignment 20k ago, if your tires are showing no uneven wear then just swap em in and go

 

You can find a picture of anything out there failing i have used dpring compressors hundreds of times of varying quality from u bolts and ready rod home made set ups to parts store rentals to large stand up units.
Still have all of my digits, inspection your tools before use do not use an impact to tighten and it's fine.

Iv seen control arms slip off jacks and jack stands kick out from vehicles. Does that make every single one unsafe? No it means they were incorrectly used generally.

 

Like I said I don’t have a dog in the fight - I’m careful about what I do too. If I were swapping coils I’d either buy a set of completes or bring it to a shop and pay a few bucks to have it done. It wasn’t just a random pic - that guy works on trucks as his 9-5 and swaps out springs all the time for mocking up suspension etc. and it happened to him too.