hey BWatson, what did you use to compress the springs when you replaced them?
Also I second the vote for Bilsteins, which are OEM. I've tryed Monroe shocks and I was not impressed with their mounting setup which consited of a single 15mm nut on the top. The OEM uses 2 17mm nuts. When I hit a pretty nasty pothole at above average speed I stripped the thread for the nut on the monroe shock. Luckily the shock didn't come out of it's hole or I would have had a slightly bigger problem
. I quickly switched over to the much higher quality of OEM Bilsteins. The difference in ride is also quite noticable (in a good way).
BTW I was able to exchange the old set of Monroes that were on the car for a new set which are sitting in the corner of my room. The guy at the parts store where I got them wasn't very happy with that, but I wasn't very happy that I didn't get my money back since the damn thing failed. Seriously, what am I going to do with a set of monroes that replaced a set that almost fell out of the car. I sure as heck aren't putting them back in.