ya toss them in your harbor freight rock polisher for a bit to clean them up and use some lock tight. mustangs aren't really as scary to do as other cars there really isn't any way for the spring to shoot out and floor jack method wont work thats if the spring is between upper and lower control arms.

 

the one I posted with fork on it does not attach to saddle spring. Fork just slides thru the lowest coil - used it a bunch of time - never had a problem with springs popping out like I had with the arms on both side compressor.

 

sorry.......you're right. i was looking at another post. the one i rented from autozone looks like yours. it worked fine. am returning the one i bought from npd. only problem i had was getting the front shock back in. i jacked up the lower control arm to get the bolts to go far enough thru the sadddle spring perch to get a nut on them. then i had pry the top of the shock back onto the top bracket. can't help but think i must be doing it wrong as it was quite a job.

 

I rented the "forked" style compressor from O'Reillys.
I didn't have reason to remove the springs so I put the fork on top of the spring housing and grabbed the next to the bottom coil with the hooks.
Used an air ratchet and sucked the spring up and out of the way.

The issue I had was with everything back together the top of the shocks were off to the side of the spring and not centered.
I read somewhere on here to shim one lower bolt on the shock to help center it, which I did. I think in a couple weeks after things settle I'll unbolt the top shock mount and see if I can remove the shim on the lower mount...