You can do stock springs without a compressor... just point the damn thing away from your face and your car when you loosen the nut Getting the spring compressed to put it back together is another story. What I ended up doing is this... Get it assembled the best you can and get it up in the strut tower. Then take your jack and put it under the strut, and start jacking it up. just keep going up until you see the strut rod poking through the top, then put the nut on and there you go. Kinda the ghetto way to do it, but it works if you are in a bind.