Don't go messing with loaded springs - treat them with a lot of respect - I found out the hard way while trying to fix the spring in my garage door. By the way, when I did mine I found it a whole lot easier if I had a set of four compressors to fully unload the spring since there is a whole lot of travel in the stock springs. I only needed two to install the shorter H&R springs. The compressors mainly get used with the strut off the car, though I did end up using them to help take a bit of load off the rear struts to remove them from the car. By the way, many autoparts stores have free loaner programs for these tools - if you were in Canada I'd direct you to Canadian Tire.
Eric
