I've had some coils sitting in my garage that I've been wanting to install but just haven't had the time. Anyway, I'm going to do it this weekend, finally.

I'm thinking about an alterative to dropping the drivers side link because I've heard of people having a hard time getting that link to match up after it was unbolted and that it takes a lot of muscle power to align it. I'll be doing this alone so I am kind of worried about not being able to get that link lined up again and bolted. I was thinking that I may be able to drop the fuel tank to get the axle to drop far enough to install the coils. I replaced the fuel pump awhile ago and it was pretty easy to drop the tank. Do you think this will work?

I did look into spring compressors, but the local rental place only has some really old compressors that look dangerous. If the dropping the tank won't work, is there an easy way to get that driver side link bolted up again?

Also, if I'm missing anything, let me know:
-unbolt lower shock bolts
-unbolt rear brake line bracket
-(do I need to unbolt the panhard?)
-remove rear link or drop fuel tank?

Thanks in advance for any helpful advice. My wife is out of town so I'm hoping to get this done before she gets back (I've been known to take a long time to get things done, so she says <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />)

Do you have a hitch?

If so it's really easy to get the link to line back up.

You can use a bottle jack between the hitch and the upper link mount to lin it up. You can also use a regular jack under the axle on the shock tab (anything you can jack on to get the rear end to rotate towar the front of the truck)

Dropping the tank would be overkill.

Joe