swapping out front coil over shock assemblies

(2nd gen front suspension) Alright all, this weekend im simply swapping out my 5100's spring and shock assembly and going back to stock spring and shock assembly... but I wish to do this myself this time around since there's going to be no spring compressor involved, the stock coil spring setup going on is a already a pre assembled coil over shock,.. my question and concern here is that I do not want to mess around with any ball joints, so would I be correct in saying, and doing, if I just disconnected the shock assembly from the top 3 bolts, large bottom bolt in lower control arm, and then just disconnected the two large bolts that hold the lower ball joint assembly to the spindle, as well as removing the entire front sway bar... Wouldnt this process allow me to get enough room to get the shock assemblies in and out of the truck? Thank you.

 

Any thoughts?? Am I thinking completely wrong here?

 

Yes sir. Sounds about right. Might not have to take the whole sway bar off. Could disconnect both sides from the shock and move the away bar up or down depending where it needs to go.

 

Yep..Probably need to "loosen" the LCA bolts too..otherwise the LCA won't move quite enough out of the way. But that's it.

 

A long pipe will take care of that.

 

Alright cool, true that. So if I cannot find a long pipe or breaker bar or something like that, how could I loosen the lower control arm bolts so that I do not completely screw up the alignment?? Because im kind of unsure about how the alignment cams on the lower control arm work. I know I have mark them somewhere but I don't see how that helps the situation lol. Btw thanks you guys for the replies, it set my mind at ease lol

 

Loosening it won't mess it up.

 

Alright awesome, good deal and thanks for all the info and replies, ill be sure to let you guys know how everything went.