Not that hard to remove. You can do it yourself in your driveway. The stock shocks will come out with the spring as a unit if you unbolt the upper controll arm. Basically you need 17 and 14 mm wrenches and sockets for the suspension. Sometimes the shock gets hung up on the lower controll arm so you have to work it a little. Deep sockets help too. If you want to reuse your springs that you will need to buy or borrow a compressor to disasseble the shock. If you're just looking for a stock replacement I would go with something like konis or tockicos with ebach springs. Will tighten handling up and is reasonably priced. I went all out and bought m2/advanced design coilovers.