why oh why do you guys keep telling poeple it can be done without the compressor. I just don't get it. No offense to sirDANG but for all you guys know he is a 15 year old farsighted burnout with half an arm. Keep your irresponsible ways to your self. the springs are compressed to hold a 2000 pound vehicle and your releasing all that energy in a milisecond. people have died, people are amputies, and you guys just don't understand.

Now to the question. Honestly the easiest thing I can tell you to do is take out the entire shock/spring assembly and bring it in to a shop. (Meineke, Sears, Whoever) The little spring compressors take for ever to mess with and sometimes hit the bump stops and take it from me after you've compressed and decompressed a spring 5 times to have it hit the bumpstop no matter what you will want to just leave the car in the air.

The shops have a huge machine that will take like two seconds. Don't call and ask...I called once to get a stripped nut removed and the guy says "yeh just bring it on down". I did and sat there watching them phuck around in the shop for 15 minutes, get it off, hand me the shock and say "You may not want to use this again and that will be $20" I almost spit in his face. The trick is you go up to ONE of the guys in the garage and tell him you'll give him $__ amount of cash to decompress em for you. You may spend $25 altogether but it will be alot less of a pain in the ass. Then when you install lowering springs you can pretty much just have a friend lean on the upper mount while you put on the nut.

myself, I use the free rented ones from autozone but have had to use the above method at times.