A second on the air tools, here...
I didn't have them when I put in my shocks/struts and I had major issues trying to get the shaft of the stock struts to stay while breaking loose the nut on the end of those factory struts. I was putting in MM CC plates at the time, and that was by far the hardest thing I have done in my own history of modding my car.
Honestly though, still wasn't all that hard. Just took an extra hour or two to figure out how to do it. Not a real biggie, in the grand scheme of things.
Bear in mind my car had the ORIGINAL struts on a '00 GT and I changed them out in '08. That is WAY TOO LONG. Could have been why those poor nuts were such a PITA.