Well well well, mister OP procrastinator here is finally in the thick of installing his heavy duty Bilstein shocks.
I tackled the front two shocks first and they are now done. That was torture. I hear the rear two are easier. I sure hope so.
One thing certain.....I really did need new shocks up front. My Koni-RV shocks acted like they were not even there when I raised the front and dropped it to relocate the jack. The front bounced like a basket ball, up/down over and over and over (and over) again.
After the HD Bilsteins were on, I dropped the front and it went down and up and finished with one very minor repeat, just like I experience with my other vehicles.
After much struggling with the front/left driver-side shock, I opened the hood and removed the two sharp-tipped self-tapping Ford screws that hold a wire harness in place. With those two sharp objects removed, I was able to get my hand to the shock-top from the upper-left channel.
One other hassle was what I call sloppy fabrication of the shocks at the Bilstein factory. Bilstein welds the hex and shaft to the top of the shock. Both shocks had excess welding metal intruding over the nut preventing me from using an open-end wrench. Fortunately for me, I had two open-end wrenches of the same large size. I modified my worst one for the project by grinding it thinner to clear the welding intrusion.
One more challenge was that the shocks come fully extended, no strapping to keep them semi-compressed. I had to place my entire body weight to compress them, and then they slowly extend back to their full length again. Laying on my back under the rig, I had to use leverage to compress the bottom of the shock upward to align it with the mounting stem of the Ford lower control arm. With the limited room to work with, that too was quite challenging.
I surely hope the worst is behind me, looking forward to getting the rears done in the next few days.
Ron Dittmer
