Ok, so I know there are a good number of you who have removed your shocks yourself in order to either put in new shocks or put lowering bolts on. My wife bought me the Burnout Cycles lowering bolts for my birthday. No disassembly of the shocks required with these.

Anyway, my question is in actually removing the shocks. The service manual says to remove the rear bolts then the front ones. When I go to remove the front ones after removing the rear, it looks like the whole shock is rotating. Is this right and something is loosing up anyway? Do I need to put the rear bolts back in enough so that the shocks don't rotate?

It's an '03 FXST by the way. Thanks!

 

There is a flat on the shock stem in the front (9/16" I believe). You need to hold it to keep things from rotating when backing off the nuts.