Front control Arms And Spindles

[edwardb]

How do you raise the lower arm since it's being held in place by the shock? It seems like the shock is limiting how much I can move the lower arm.

There's no reason to have the coilover shock installed before getting the upper and lower ball joints buttoned up. Get it out of there so you can have relatively free movement. The ball joints will still be stiff as mentioned. But much easier to work that way.

Any idea how many threads should be exposed at the top of the coil shock?

For the initial setting, run the adjuster down on all four shocks to just where it touches the coil. Later when you have it down on the wheels, you can check ride height and adjust further. The ride height will be too high at that setting, but it's where to start. Then when you adjust ride height, (1) leave it a bit high for starters because it will settle, (2) always adjust the front and rear pairs exactly the same amount. Normally this will give a pretty accurate setup without actually corner weighting it.