thanks for the excellent writeup I came up with the same idea just now by removing the inner LCA bolt

I undid the shocks at the tower end too so the control arm literally drops to the ground

before I started I was under the wrong impression that after compressing the springs, I could simply slide out the springs from their seat (I've been toying with too many Japanese cars that will do that) so I never realized that the plate themselves could get locked into the suspension itself.

new lesson learned: to remove spring, remove LCA mount bolt....

I was pretty stumped by the multilink (5 of them + sway bar!!!) jungle out in the back...... with all this complexity and all of them are mounted to the car via a subframe via some flimsy bushings.....

....to top that off NONE of the links are adjustable!!!