Has anyone removed the front coil spring on a
2 wheel drive. Is it a difficult procedure and do you
need any special tools ?

 

Ive done some earlier ones. jack up the truck and put it on stands, remove the tires, shocks, might have to pop the tierod loose, put a floor jack under the side your working on, load the lower are a little, remove the lower ball joint nut and gently knock it loose with a pickle fork. You may need to lower the floor jack some to see thats its loose actually then slowly lower it all the way. typically now you have the spring so unloaded you can pull it out. Use caution all the way as the spring stores lots of energy. its really easy to do actually.

 

Do you need a spring compressor? I'm going to
try and install some 1.5" spacers this weekend.

 

Did mine, but mine's a 4X4...not sure how different they are...make sure you get some heavy duty spring compressors...kinda scary having all that kinetic energy dangliing on a set of crappy compressors...could get someone hurt Other than that, not too bad...

 

Probably no on the compressor. Ive never needed one. Typically if you have the truck high enough than you can litterally drop the lower arm down at a 90 degerr angle to the ground. There is a pressed area where the spring will seat and you can Usually catch the edge enough to get the spring set then jack up the lower arm and reinstall the lower joint. I did at one point need a compressor once when installing a set of 3"lift springs in a 79 D50 PU. TYhese were aftermarket off roas springs that were so stiff and long (POS) when done you had to hit a speed bump at 50 mph to get the springs to compress even slightly. My front ball joints lasted 5k after the install of these. Thanks John Baker off road.