Yea I'll be honest and say this was one of the worstexperiences I had while trying to install these. The job took me a little less than 6 hours! To start...I'll explain why the front took a long time. For some reason..the stock shocks don't have a holding nut..so after an hour of trying to figure out how to loosen the top nut...I pounded a 17mm wrench into the bastard, and it did the trick. I had to remove the black cover because it was in the way of the control arm. Then I finally got to the rear...which I thought would be like...100 times easier......... I was wrong. So the rear shocks had a bolt and a nut so i needed a wrench and a ratchet at the same time. The bottom was bein a pain in the ***, becuase for some odd reason, the wrench and socket would constantly slip. Somehow I got those off...which took another hour. Then I got to the top.....this part I was cussing every couple of minutes. The reason being..is cuz the nut had like...1 freakin centimeter of space between the frame rail and the shock. So yea that took another 2 hours. It was 10:30 by the time I installed only one rear shock. So tommorrow I'll install the right rear shock. Here are some before and after pics...only for the front tho. I'll post the rears tommorrows.


[IMG]local://upfiles/45124/B99D7927A49F453EBB6B368C5CC8391C.jpg[/IMG]

[IMG]local://upfiles/45124/CB2FBAA372A948AFAC6B450EDC3A91E2.jpg[/IMG]

 

and 2 more..

and as for the end result...took a little joy ride....holy **** is all I can say. MUCH smoother ride.

[IMG]local://upfiles/45124/0694B258EE0B47359D2F240A3B674662.jpg[/IMG]

[IMG]local://upfiles/45124/C295777C7355430AB2A2E2CD8C89A3DE.jpg[/IMG]

 

sounds like ya may want to get some quality tools or somthing not sure what the problem was...

 

what shocks did you end up going with

 

I used Vicegrips and a wrench to take off the top nut off the front shocks. The vicegrip goes on the piston shaft and you just turn the nut.

As for the rear, in the 2004 Dak the nut (or bolt, I forgot) has a metal bracing tab thing so you only need to trun the bolt. It's like a mini attached wrench so when it starts to spin it hits a part of the body so you can do all the work from one end of the fastener.

Sorry it took you so long. All 4 of mine took 1-1/2 hour including rotating the tires.

 

For future reference, when the top of the front shock is spinng, hit it repeatedly with an impact wrench. It will shoot right off.

 

KYB MonoMax gas shocks. Retail price is like 250. I got em off of ebay for 176.

Yea I was thinking of using vicegrips...but had none. I was cussing a lot yesterday. Also wish I had a salsaw.

for the rear, yea mine had that tab, but the damn thing twisted so much with the force of the ratchet, that all it did was pass right by the frame. I was so pissed about that. Somehow I was able to squeeze through and get channel locks holding down that pos. My hand kinda got blistered after that.

 

air tools make things much easier.

 

My rancho shocks took about an hour and a half to do, very easy!

 

i seem to get a bit torch happy, fixes my frustrations!!