That spring is very long and under a lot of compression. If you have never seen a W124 spring in a box you wont know, its not like a regular chevy spring.

Even removing the control arms fully and making them almost vertical still holds the spring in its cup. Its that long. (be careful as you have disassembled the rollbar too, that bar limits the control arm downward swing)

Now to get this back into place, raise up the body of the car and install jack stands. leave the tire on, position a jack so you slowly raise the control arm up, once the joint butt is off the wheel rim barrel, the entire spindle will be free to move in any direction, have someone with mechanical skill and aptitude to position the spindle on the ball joint stud and then raise the jack upwards so it seats, then install the pinch bolt - make sure the whistle notch of the joint is lined up before you start any of the above.

The balljoint sits at a very sharp angle as the car has a 8 degree caster angle - so it wont go in easy and you will have to wrestle the spindle in the 1 and 7 oclock position to get it to line up.

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2012 BMW X5 (Beef + Granite suspension model)

1995 E300D - The original humming machine (consumed by Flood 2017)
2000 E320 - The evolution (consumed by flood 2017)