I guess I'll chime in since I struggled with installing rear shocks. Taking my old ones out was easy because I used the suggestions I learned on the forum. I took the bottom bolts out first, grabbed onto the shock with a big channel locks, got a socket on the top nut and spun them out with relative ease.
I chose Bilstein replacements but they were a little different than OEM. You can tighten the top nut to a certain point but then the spindle starts spinning inside the shock. There's a allen head on the top of the spindle you can hold while you tighten the nut but now you can no longer use a socket. I was painfully using an open end wrench getting a minuscule turn over and over again until I finally got them tight. And this is all blind just feeling the wrench back onto the nut. What a pain! What would have been the ticket but I didn't own them at the time is those ratcheting wrenches. This way, I could have had the ratchet function and also be able to hold the shock spindle with the allen on top. After that experience, I bought a set of those ratcheting wrenches which come in very handy.
Hope this helps.
