yeah, pretty stupid. but when you look at the piston of the new shock absorber, you see that it's only threaded at the top 2" or so. so when I was screwing it down, I was afraid that I was going to screw the nut past the threaded part and have the damn spring uncompress and shoot shiit all over the place.

ah well. nothing like doing a job 6 times over to get it right rather than taking it to an experienced mechanic