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I am changing shocks on my 2007. Plenty of challenges in this job, most of which are solved after trips to the store for the right tools! However, even when jacking up the lower control arm, the lower mounting bolt "ears" on the new front shocks do not very easily line up with the holes in the lower control arm. The ears need to be rotated in order to sit flush against the lower control arm. In the picture I will post below, the old shock has those ears turned so they are flush with the control arm, but the new Bilstein ears are perfectly perpendicular to the shock axis and not flush with the control arm. I did get the lower bolts into one side, but when torquing one of them down, the bolt snapped and now I have to get it out and replace it. Haven't done the other side of the car yet.
What is the easiest way to deal with this? The ears don't seem to rotate very easily with a wrench before installation, or at least they don't stay in the rotated position.
Last edited by sporre13; Aug 30, 2025 at 11:54 PM.
Update: now I've ruined three of my four existing bolts. Two snapped, one stripped badly. Going to have to buy four new ones ASAP. I think I am stripping them trying to get them through the not-very-aligned holes in the shock ears and the control arm. Then when stripped, the nut isn't turning and it snaps, or turns too much and heats up and snaps. I did not expect this to be the hard part.
I typically use an alignment punch to rotate that into about the correct position (past it and it springs back a little) then use the punch to line up the holes.
I'm not sure what else is going on there.
Put the mounting tab in a vise and move the shock until the tab is at the correct angle. Or mount the shock to the control arm first and push the shock until it lines up to the top mount. There is no way you are going to force the tab to line up using the bolts.
Put a board under the ball joint and jack up the control arm. They should line up when they close the correct ride height. put bolts from top and nuts on the bottom.
At least that's how we used to do the during development.
Bilstein Front Shocks Ear angle
