Haven't worked this hard in a long time. I replaced passenger side shock and spring. 4 hours later, I started on driver side, only to realize air conditioning tube is in the way. How in the hell did anyone "finesse" the shock tower out?? Atlantic British makes it seem too easy. Any pointers???

 

Wiggle wiggle, and it'll pull thru and then up and out. You should be able to remove the tower and the shock at the same time. On re-installation I always mount the front shock towers rotated 180 degrees. That way in the future if you ever have to mess with the upper shock bolt you can now remove it very easily. Like say for example you're changing coils up front you can now remove the shock from the bottom without ever messing with the tower again as it can now drop out the bottom with the coil spring.

 

Well, Clint, I'm removing and replacing coils, too. Wouldn't it be easy to remove both coil and shock from beneath? I do not see how the tower can "wiggle" pass both tubing for brakes and air. Thank god for spring compressors

 

Yes, but in order to do that you will have to rotate the shock tower. So that you can remove the upper shock bolt. From the factory the bolt head = toward the fender vs toward the engine so you can't just drop the shock. So loosen the 4 bolts holding the shock tower to the frame, then rotate it 180 degree, and then you can remove the 18mm bolt from the upper shock bushing.

Also spring compressors shouldn't be needed if you are removing a stock height coil spring. You can stick the LR bottle jack between the axle and frame and get 1-2inch more clearance and usually the coil will just fall out. If you are lifting your LR with a 2inch lift I'd also highly recommend removing the lower support which is mounted far forward directly under the front driveshaft. In fact if in place during a lift install the front drive shaft will actually come to rest on it which is the same exact thing it will do when off road and flexing. Spray the 4 10mm bolts that hold that puppy on and remove it. You'll also stand a better chance if the front shaft has an issue and it will have a chance to drop to the ground vs slap into that support and then smack directly into your transmission.

 

I'll give it a go tomorrow. Thank you for your support. I've noticed that at my age, it's getting harder for me to wrench like I used to.

 

No problem at all! Like the company motto at Diebold used to be "Work smarter not harder" so many little tricks can save you hours of time working on things.