Gonna need shocks pretty soon here...

I'm almost done with my daily its gonna be up and ready to drive here pretty soon but I need some shocks, the mounts are there just need to purchase them, so what do I need to keep in mind when looking for shocks? just the collapsed height of the shocks, or does the heighth it extends to matter to? because the way i see it is, the heigth of it collapsed will affect how low my truck lays so i gotta keep that in mind, but the heigth it extends too shouldnt matter that much cuz i mean it can only extend to how far my bag goes up, right? or am I wrong. Hope that makes sense lend me youre knowledge!

The height it will extend will also limit how much lift you get. Find a shock that is going to be at meduim stroke at your desired ride height.. If the shock it too compressed when you are driving around it does not have much room to dampen your ride. if its maxed out then you have the same problem at the opposite end of the spectrum. take three measurements of where your going to mount your shock... locked up.. ride height.. dumped.. find a happy meduim between the three.. make sense?

perfect sense, I'm thinking about going with bilstein, but theirs so many model shocks they have im not sure which one to go with, I have a 96 tacoma, the shocks mounts are not in the stock locations tho (obviously cuz i have bags).

Just to keep it in the same thread, now that i have the money to do it i was wondering what needs to be done to replace the stock balljoints i have now to heim joints on the stock control arms, do I need to do any cutting or fabricating or do they mount right up, and what exactly do I need? i wanna change the upper and lower joint on both sides and even the steering joint, how much money am i looking at spending on all the parts?

-thanks

when measuring what size shocks i need should i measur from mount to mount on the truck when its lowered, locked up, and at ride heigth or do i measure from hole to hole on the shocks?

ALL THREE,

yea but im saying what should i measure the inside of the shocks holes to the other part end of the shock hole? or from all the way from one end of the shock to the other end, or from mount to mount on my truck?. I aks because im really sure how the companies measure the sizes of the shocks, so i dont order the wrong ones