Originally Posted by Hawkz28

I've done this job before.

I understand the nut your talking about, I had to remove that and use a 2 jaw puller to get it apart.

But, If you raise the truck off the ground with wheel removed, there is no compression on the spring, don't get why you had to "relieve tension?". The weight of the steering knuckle assembly will be pulling the strut assembly apart, not together.

And what I did was placed a floor jack under the lower control arm to just get the weight of the steering knuckle off the strut, and it was easy. At that point the strut assemble has no compression or "decompression" force on it.

Originally Posted by goldenarm7

Sitting here at the shop and this mechanic couldn't get the ball joint nut off either, so guess who just bought a new UCA? Yup. To explain why there is still tension, I have a 2.5" leveling spacer, hence, there is a larger space required for the coil to be fully extended, which means I couldn't get it to a point where there was no pressure from the coil. We discussed the spacer earlier in this thread, but it is back a page or two by now. Moral of the story: either don't mess with that ball joint nut, or do it with an air wrench and get it completely off.

Originally Posted by Hawkz28

Ok, I guess without a spacer it makes the job 100 times easier............

Originally Posted by 2008_XL

Absolutely does. When I had my truck raised 2.5" in the front, it was tough. Now I only have a 1/2" spacer and the coil over can slide in and out without having to even touch or remove any other part.