My lift turned into a relative nightmare, too. 100K of Ohio driving on salty roads turned most of my front end into a rusted hulk. I got the rear in without too much issue, but after I determined I didn't have all the right tools necessary to do the front, I took it to a shop.

They ended up having to replace the upper control arms and struts. I already knew I needed struts as one of them was leaking. Then to do the alignment, they had to replace the inner and outer tie rod ends and sleeves. They also pulled the lower control arms off entirely to put in my spacers.

Cost me a heckuva lot more than I was planning on to do this lift, but I now have a new front end given that I just had a new driveshaft, hubs and halfshafts installed under warranty from Kia. Goes well with the new fuel tank and lines I put in a month or so back.

Now I just need to trim my wheel arch to get the 31" tires to clear. I was planning on just going with 235/75/15 on stock rims but found a good deal on some Centerlines with 31's already installed, so....