The ball joints in upper control arms are shot. A lot of play in tire. Do I have to take the coil/shock out in order to replace the upper control arms? Can I simply lift the truck and unbolt it and replace with new control arm and ball joints? Thanks.

 

Take the tire off, lift and you can unbolt the upper. All the load is on the lower.

 

And don't forget to check the alignment when you're done.

 

On my 2003, I had to pull the coil/shock because the upper control arm bolts at the frame were trapped by the top mount of the coil/shock. I even tried to be sneaky by only undoing the top mount and fully drooping the suspension to tip the top of the coil/shock outboard and remove the bolts...nope...the suspension wouldn't droop enough to let me get the top mount out of the bucket. I had to fully remove the coil/shock assembly to replace my upper control arms.

 

Broncoholic is correct. Now that I think about it, you do have to get the spring/shock assembly out of the way so the upper control arm bolts will have the clearance to be removed. The whole operation goes better if you have a floor jack or bottle jack available. So you're going to have to remove the three nuts off the top of the shock mount, then with a floor jack take the load off the lower mount bolt and lower the assembly down till you have the needed clearance. The spring is captured on the shock, so it's not going to go flying off on it's own.

 

The spring assembly def has to come out. There’s no way to remove the front bolt for the control arm without the coil removed. It’ll back out 1/2 way then hit the coil.

 

Year, model, air suspension or no, 2WD or 4WD?

 

Yes easy if u got tools