The front shocks on my 2004 Marauder blew out some time ago. I tried to swap em out but was unable to get the bolts off the ball joints... Many months later finally got it done



More to come

Wow, you really took it apart. Why did you separate the knuckle from the lower ball joint? We left mine intact when I did it. We did remove the sway bar totally as that gave us extra room.

Lower ball joint was found to be just starting to get loose, so "since we were in there..."

All the fasteners on the aluminum knuckle have no taper and you have to hold the stud in place to get the retaining nuts off, even with an Impact wrench.

The lower ball joints came off easier and probably saved time vs trying to wrestle the strut out with the knuckle attached. Even with the knuckle off we still had to loosen the upper control arm bolts and swing it out of the way.

The leaky strut


The new Monroe severe service strut uses a plastic spacer to hold the pigtail end of the spring

the spring compressor worked well



The other side needed a lower ball joint too



I had pad slapped last summer and the original rotors were a mess after a few thousand miles, they were far too rusty to turn anyways...



All done




I think it's riding a bit high

Old pic



After struts



We jacked up the suspension via the lower control arm before re-torquing the upper control arms but that may not have been enough... Or the replacement struts make it ride a bit higher..

This morning before loosening the upper control arms and lower shock bolts




After loosening plus I pushed down on the suspension a few times before re-torquing



Still seems high but apparently a bit lower than before??

I am guessing that the aftermarket shocks have a bit less spring height, especially with the plastic spacer which takes up that notch where the bottom pigtail of the spring sits in, called the coil spring seat.



The factory struts have the seat as part of the strut, so perhaps the new struts compress the spring a bit more than stock

Had the same issue after replacing mine, I attributed it to this...
http://imgur.com/a/LAXxT#6

Comparing to the new one...
http://imgur.com/a/LAXxT#7

Even after 25,000 miles it still rides high similar to yours

last year i put on the same gas magnum severe service struts you did. i had the car completely on its own weight when torqueing the UCA and did not have a change in ride height. like 737 said, it could be that the bushing in the shock gave it a little more height, but without a pre vs post measurement its hard to tell how much higher yours is. unless you somehow twisted the spring 'open' a bit when installing? if you had the spring alignment slightly off when you installed the strut and had to twist it to get the bottom bolt in, you could have twisted it open slightly causing a taller spring.

I bet it's riding about a 1/4" higher in front. I put the KYB police spec shocks on my car with Eibach 1.5 lowering springs, it really lowered the car about 1 1/4". Although mine didn't have the plastic spacer, they had the metal bucket like the factory shocks. Interesting. I just put the shocks on a few weeks ago too.

They should have settled after about 100 miles of driving.

The ball joints don't have tapered studs? That could make separating them without damage a lot easier. My buddy's '03 is getting new front shocks in the very near future and that was something I was worried about since as far as we can tell, the ball joints are in good condition still.

Just use good allen key sockets to hold the ball joint stud in place while you remove the bolt.

I did confirm from my pictures that indeed my original lower shock eyelet was sunken off the centerline while the new shock was in the middle, looked just like the pictures that Computer geek had posted.

Plus since the strut is used for other applications the distance of the spring perch from the lower mount is probably a bit longer as well. For the average joe they won't sweat a few MM of extra ride height....

These QA-1 struts would fix that problem

We fiddled quite a bit to get the springs lined up right, we did twist one side a bit but we rotated the upper mount and the springs were nice and flush against both notches.

If the car has any mileage at all on it, I'd replace the ball joints while I was in there. But, I don't like doing things twice.

Bumping my thread, forgot to add the part numbers.

Rockauto.com:

monroe#550018---rear(gas magnum severe service)

Monroe#553001---front(gas magnum severe service)

Moog#80668---front springs to go with #553001 (I used my original MM springs, but if you need new ones that's then one you want)

I can report they feel just as good as when I put em on last year. The Front end has settled back down somewhat too!!

How do they compare to stock shocks?
I need to this to my 11 cvpi, the drivers front squeaks when hitting bumps.