Shock replacement/sway bar disconnection question

Hey everyone!
I hope you had a better weekend than I did! First off a question, then a story...
When replacing the front shocks on an ‘06 Tacoma 4x4 model, do you have to disconnect the swaybar?
Now the story...
So, I was up in Bishop, California this weekend on a rock climbing trip when I ran into some issues. On my way out of the climbing area I was in, I hit a turn and lost traction on the well maintained washboard dirt road and ended up spinning out ending up facing the opposite direction I was going and had to get pulled out of the ditch on the side of the dirt road. After checking the truck out to make sure everything was ok (the skid plate saved my ass), I knoticed that there was a large amount of grease in the passenger side front wheel well. Not knowing that much about the mechanics of trucks, I flagged someone down and asked if they would take a look. After the crawled under the truck, they came up saying that my cv boot had been slashed and that where the swaybar connects to the suspension was not in place. Anyway, I limped the truck back into town (approx 10 miles, 5 of which is on dirty) and ended up at a friend of mine’s house who was a mechanic. He took a look and had the same diagnosis. What we can’t figure out is why/how the nut that holds the sway bar in place is missing... its there on the other side. Anyway, to end the story, I had to leave my truck in Bishop to get fixed by the Toyota dealership(who’s wasting my time.) and now I’m trying to figure out how that but could have ever fallen off the truck. If you’ve got any ideas, I’d love to hear ‘em!
Thanks for your time!

 

Not sure how the nut went missing, when I removed my sway bar those nuts were on there TIGHT. As far as installing the shocks, I just disconnected my sway bar where it mounts under the engine in the front, it’s only 4 bolts and that allowed me enough room to get it out of the way to install shocks.

 

Thanks dude. The only way I think it could have gone missing is if the shop I took it to that replaced the shocks didn’t proper torque it when putting the swaybar back on... I don’t know though.

 

That’s a real possibility man. When I put mine back in I thought I had torqued the nuts on the end link down, but I had some rattling up front and when I got back under to check one of those nuts still had 3 full turns left until tight. Is it the one that connects the sway bar to the end link or the link to the spindle? On mine the one connecting the link to the sway bar was the one that backed off

 

I’m not quite sure, but it was the bolt at the on of the piece that’s completely vertical and connects to the suspension. Sorry I can’t be more descriptive, I need to learn more about these things...

 

Gotcha. That’s the opposite one that I had issues with, but it’s completely possible that the same issue could have occurred because they’re the same nuts and I’m assuming they share the same physical load. I’d definitely hit them up because they may be at fault