Will a shock replacement require an alignment afterwards?

[chrisbruck]

Pretty self explanatory.... Last year had my car professionally aligned and corner balanced. If I only replace all 4 shocks and touch nothing else, will it mess up the current settings?

[175K911]

You should be fine if done properly.

In the rear you will have no problems, remove and replace the shock.
In the front you'll be OK assuming you're just replacing the strut insert. Have to be careful but the insert can be replaced without removing the strut assembly from the car. However, it the strut assembly is being replaced entirely, or if the strut housing has to be removed to replace the insert then you should still be fine as long as neither the tie rod ends nor the upper strut mounts get moved.

[chrisbruck]

I'd be just replacing he front inserts only. Got the stock boge strut assemblies and would likely add the bilstein insert. The rears are a no brainier. Just wasn't sure about the fronts.

[KTL]

Shoulda done the shocks before you had it aligned and balanced!

Fronts are of course tougher but there's no change to alignment settings per se' as you don't touch the tie rod ends, nor the upper strut mount bolts. That's assuming your ride height doesn't change. Entirely possible that it could change since you're replacing tired Boge with fresh Bilstein. Not to mention front is very sensitive to ride height. VERY. So if nothing else you'll want to check your alignment afterwards. For a street car, not super critical. But I learned this firsthand on my racecar after I fiddled with the front height and totally jacked my front alignment- car understeered like mad, huge increae in lap time.

Rear is indeed the no-brainer. But you may find your rear height is cranked way up. Here's a picture of my '87 when I first got it & put new rear shocks on it. See post # 16 What's Wrong With This Picture?

[mnez]

As Kevin says, you can expect the ride height to increase. So yes it may mess up your alignment settings. If you make some careful measurements beforehand, you may be able to return the car the original ride height, so your settings will be pretty close to what you want.

[Scott Douglas]

When I was faced with resetting the ride height and replacing spring plate bushings on my car, I discussed shocks being done too.
We (Johnson's Alignment) decided it would be better to replace the rear shocks as well since the new ones would probably change the ride height/corner balance enough that it would have to be done over. I think you'll want to redo the corner balance and will more than likely have to play with the ride height if you replace all four.

[KTL]

Note that the rear is not as sensitive to height change as the front. So your alignment back there won't be all out of whack. But the balance could be altered a bit and the appearance will probably disappoint you.

Honestly for a street car the corner balance is not all that critical. For quite a while my street car was way out of whack on corner balance (around 300 lbs light in right rear) and it was undetectable on the street. At track days the car would spin the right rear a lot in turns (no LSD) that required a lot of steering input.

Car handled decent but man did it spin that right rear. After I finally decided to stop being stupid, I corner weighted the car and what a difference it made. No more wheelspin in the typical locations. With a good sharp, aggressive alignment & a good corner balance, the car was transformed from decent to wow, this thing is hooked-up!

[chrisbruck]

Thanks for all the good info... my shocks are still ok for the time being on the street... just trying to figure out the next "project" to tackle.

[Charles Freeborn]

Not completely familiar with Boge to Bilstein conversion, but I doubt you could do it without pulling the struts, and hence need to re-align. If you're going that far you'll probably want to review bushings and so on, so there you go.
As we say in the trades when estimating "double the time and triple the money and you'll be close"
-C

[KTL]

Boge to Bilstein shock change up front is possible because Bilstein makes a shock insert that goes into the Boge strut housing. So it's just an insert replacement, not a complete strut assembly swap-out.