Afternoon turned out nice so decided to have a go at the shock absorbers after I finished work.
They beat me.
First time trying out the Milwaukee impact wrench and that did the job fine - had a little trouble at first getting the wheel bolts out, but it's a mix of a lack of copper slip on the threads and me worrying about waking the dead by leaving it on the third setting until they came out.
Everything was going fine with the shocks - the impact wrench even got the lower shock bolt out that's been rusted in place for years (it stripped half the thread...!) - until I tried to get the lower shock out of the knuckle. I bought some spreaders and was expecting it to be easy, but I couldn't really find anywhere to put the spreader in, and where I did put it, which was about an inch or so under the bolt hole, it seemed too low to actually do anything. I couldn't get it in any higher because the fin on the shock got in the way and when I hit the knuckle with a hammer, the spreader fell out, so it obviously wasn't spreading as much as it should have.
Sprayed plenty of penetrating lube in and around the strut as well. All that did was give me PTSD from when I was trying to get snapped bolts out back in March.
As the girlfriend is going to be using the car for the next fortnight, I didn't want to do anything drastic that might take it off the road, so will just leave it a while.
Since the car was on axle stands I decided to fit the horn that
@Thai-wronghorse sent me. Proper pain in the arse that was. Had to remove the foglight grill and take the foglight out to get the bolt for the high tone one back in. They don't make it easy for you. Remembered to test it before I'd put everything back together though. Nice to have a proper baaaaarp sound again.