My Experience with the No Spring Compressor Method

Hey all, I'm in the process of replacing my shocks with a set of Bilstien 4600s. First of all, I ordered through @HeadStrong Off-Road and couldn't be happier with the service and speed of things! I let them know I was in a bit of a hurry to get an order in time to get things installed and aligned before a trip and they hooked it up! I had my new shocks on my doorstep in 3 days from order to delivery! Highly recommend them.

Ok, moving on to the install. I decided to do the fronts first as the alignment appointment was the most time critical item for me. After reading around the forums and watching a few videos I felt comfortable attempting the 'no spring compressor method' where you use a jack under the LCA and the weight of the truck to decompress (and recompress the spring).

Drivers side went flawlessly, exactly as I expected in the videos and felt very safe. I had some steel cable laying around so I looped it around the spring, UCA, and front of the frame as extra security in case S*** hit the fan, but, it didn't.

Passenger side however, did not play as nice. I got to the point where I lowered the jack to decompress and noticed that my LCA did not go down very far. I also reached in and felt the spring, very clearly still under compression. hm, that's odd, everything is loosened, double checked that....I tried a few more times jacking it all the way back up and then letting down, hoping cycling it might break something loose, no luck.

What I ultimately discovered was that the washer and top bushing were rusted fast to the shock shaft, so tight in fact that this held the spring together just as if the nut were still there! What I later realized after looking back, when i first lowered it and it wasn't supported by the jack, I GOT VERY LUCKY that this did not wiggle things loose. the spring was restrained only by that washer rust, but also i had my steel cable in place as a failsafe so would have scared the s*** out of me but likely would not have been catastrophic. Another indicator that this was what was holding my load was that as i jacked the truck up and put more load on the jack, it became easier to rotate the shock shaft, indicating that the shaft/washer/bushing area was holding load as i decompress things

Eventually, I was able to free it up by jacking the truck all the way up so the load was supported by the jack, beating the snot out of that washer until it broke loose, and then all decompressed like normal. Assembly was just as easy as the other side, things fit very nicely (stock dimensions, no lift).

I wanted to post this to show that while you will read a lot of opinions of either "this is perfectly safe, I do it all the time" and "I would never do that, you'll kill yourself" ultimately I do feel this is the safest way to compress and decompress a spring if you are a DIY'er.
BUT if you aren't properly prepared and aware of what's going on, situations can come up and i have no doubt it could kill you if s*** hits the fan.

That is no excuse for not understanding the system, and more importantly, the load path here. I was able to relatively quickly understand that something wasn't right and my spring was only held together by rust but if i didn't know i could have started whacking on things with no jack support and things could have gone south pretty quick.

-Also, use a cable or chain around the spring and UCA. it's cheap insurance, especially for off nominal things like this that happen. Had that rust failed, my cable would have prevented a spring from flying around still.




Hopefully this helps someone, now off to do my rears. Gonna save the grief and go straight for the sawzall!

 

Also remember that for the spring to actually come all the way out of there, it has to get over the shaft and shock body, so by keeping those straight and lowering the strut downward with the spring still retained up top in the pocket, it's far less likely to go flying anywhere.