I've just bought a set of Gabriel air shocks and I decided to install them my self. I've never installed shocks before so can some one give me some pointers. Do I have to do any thing special with the lines for the shocks (purging). I pulled both shocks out of the box one is lower than the other how do I balance them out? As you can tell I know nothing about car suspensions.

 

If you mean the the rear shocks they are easy, if you mean the front struts that a little more work but also easy.. Let me know if you still going to do this and I'll walk you thru it...

 

If you mean installing them on one of these cars, the best pointer I can give you about installing them is, don't. Take them back.

The top of the shock only goes through a section of the sheet metal that the body is made out of. It's not frame material or anything like that. It's real thin. It frequently breaks just from the stress of absorbing shocks, in normal operation. Even that relatively small amount of force is too much, and the rubber shock mount just punches it right out. Jacking the car up with air shocks will probably break the body in a couple of hundred miles, or the first time you hit a really good bump.

If you want to change your ride height, get some different springs. These aren't some old leaf-spring cars from the 60s that any hilljack can warp the suspension any way they want to just to make it "look" like somebody's hallucination of a race car, like people used to do; they're much more picky about how you do stuff like that.

 

I agree take them back and get regular shocks,, I miss read the "Air" thing...