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How to Change Front Shocks on a Lincoln Town Car!

If your Town Car is starting to hit the bumps a little hard in the front, or if the car is swerving a bit and feeling soft, you may need to replace those Lincoln Town Car front shocks, especially if it has been a while. If you are mechanically inclined you should be able to do this job without any issues.

With the car in park and emergency brake on, set up your tire blocks behind the rear tires. If you have an active air suspension system, turn it off from the switch in the trunk. From under the hood, loosen the nut on the shock rod with your 9/16 hand wrench or deep well socket. Hopefully it turns easily and isn't frozen, which would not be unusual. If this is the case, you will need the "Optional" items mentioned. Try some Rust Buster spray and work with vice grips to hold the shock rod still if it turns with the nut. The worse case scenario should be having to use a nut splitter to split open the nut for removal.

Loosen the lug nuts on the tire; jack the car up high enough to fully remove the tire. Set up a jack stand under the frame of the car on the side you will be working on, but not too near to the bottom of the shock, since you need this area clear. Never rely on a floor jack to carry the load of the car when you will be under it.

Put on your safety glasses to avoid any debris from getting into your eyes while under the car looking up. Set up lighting under the car and then loosen the 2 shock mounting bolts. They should loosen up easily with your 9/16 socket or hand wrench. Once they are completely out, remove the shock from the bottom of the car.

To install the new front shock, slide a metal cup down the shock rod, bowl side facing upwards, and follow it with a rubber bushing, making sure that the metal cup embraces the rubber bushing within it's bowl shape. Now feed the shock up from the bottom of the car and hold the bottom of the shock upward onto the mounting surface as you tighten the 2 bolts.

Going back under the hood, slide the second rubber bushing and metal cup to follow, over the shock rod, making sure the rubber bushing is sitting flush on top of the mounting tower with the metal cup embracing the bushing, and then tighten down the nut until the shock rod begins to turn with the nut.

Put your tire back on, remove your jack and stand, then follow the same steps for removal and installation for the other side.

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How do you remove a stuck, and now broken oil filter after trying all known options?

I was doing a routine oil change on my car today, A 2004 Toyota Matrix xR to be exact, the first one I've done since I bought it 6 months ago. And before you say "Did it even need to be changed", It did, Trust me. Anyways, the oil filter was tightened so much that I ended up crushing the can with the filter wrench, then went and bought a cup wrench, which broke under the stress. Finally I ended up using the strap wrench, which didn't work either. When I did some research on means of removing oil filters, it recommended piercing the filter with a screw driver to gain leverage. The only thing it did was shred the can open. So now, my car is totally unusable, and I have no idea what I can do to remove it as Ive exhausted all common methods. Please, if you know how to remedy this situation, I'm all ears!

Get a regular metal strap type wrench way up on the flange of the filter, closest to the motor. That's the stiffest part. If you can't get your regular one up there, get the kind that you attach a ratchet to, and use an extension. Looks basically like this one;

http://images1.hdpi.com/product/lubrimatic-70635.jpg

although the ones I have, have a little more leverage built in, like this one except without the handle;

http://www.classic-car-magazine.co.uk/articles/images/oil_change/oil_filter_wrench.jpg

The ones with the cloth or plastic straps don't distribute the pressure as evenly, and all those end cap ones depend on the strength of the shell which is the weakest part. Even worse are the ones that use chains or clamping jaws. Piercing the shell with a screwdriver hardly ever works, it just tears the thin metal.