As far as diy goes. I am not e mechanic by no means. Do it at your own risk since suspension if not done properly can cause…. You know what I mean. It's just description of what I have done
It's too late for photos now but I can describe procedure since my memory is still fresh. Keep in mind I am not native speaker so I will try to do that as good as I can
To me the hardest part is the interior. I hate taking it apart but was super easy in F90.
For the rear.
Remove rear seats side bolsters. They just pop out. Pull them towards front of the car.
Fold down seats
Unscrew three small 8 or 9mm bolts directly underneath rear sunshade inside the trunk if so equipped.
With seats folded there are 5 plastic rivets that need to be taken out holding rear deck cover in place.
Remove c pillars. Pull them towards inside of the cabin. They are held by 2 plastic clips and one metal one.
Pull out seatbelt and make some nut or just try to prevent them from folding back. There are two 10mm bolts holding them and one t50 or t40 that hold the seatbelt to the c pillar. Don't forget about this part since if seatbelt mechanism is not in the orientation it's mounted in the car ball bearing will keep locking and preventing from seatbelt to be unfolded. You will know what I mean once it'll do it to you
removing seatbelt mechanism is needed to lift sound deadening material under rear deck cover.
Now slowly lift rear deck up and unplug speaker wires. I believe there are two on one side and one on the other. This may differ if you have different system from b&w that's in my car.
Now you can lift the car and remove the wheel. There is one bolt holding rear strut at its bottom and three nuts up top that you access from rear deck. Remove those and strut is yours. Remove it slowly. There is wire plugged on top of the mount. Unplug it when you lower the strut. It just pulls upwards.
If you swap the struts like I have it's the important part. Take a good look at the strut. You need to take note at the bottom of the strut where spring ends and mark this location on your new strut. Spring has a rubber at the bottom. Make sure it's oriented same way on your new strut when you transfer it. You also need to mark orientation of the top mount. The outward bolt location if I remember well lines up with the bottom center of mounting bolt. The top mount fits only one way. You can try to see how it fits when removed from the strut. This is important since if done incorrectly strut will not line up with mounting location at the bottom.
I did not have special tool to remove the mounts. It is 18mm multipoint nut. I have used deep offset box wrench for this and held strut shaft with 10mm wrench. Once spring is compressed it will come off pretty's easily.
I guess that's all for the rear. Put everything back in reverse order.
Fronts. They are much easier. At least they were for me.
There's plastic under the hood on both sides that need to be removed. Both of them are by rubber seal. Struts up top are covered by large rubber covers that wire goes into. It'll be quite obvious once you're there. There is plastic part with rubber weatherstripping covering two of three bolts that I did not remove. Once two plastic rivets are removed it spins around and you can uncover bolts. They're 16mm, and they hold strut mount up top. I removed them last.
For this I have used two jacks to remove whole front off the ground to prevent suspension from creating tension from being only raised on the side you're working on. Made job easier.
Remove wheel
Remove end link. It's bolted to strut "fork" that you will need to remove later.
Remove bolt that is holding that fork. It's 16mm if I remember correctly. I've used small chisel to spread it some and sprayed silicone spray for it to come off easier.
Remove all the wires around the knuckle and two that are by the wheel well. Just make sure they are just removed from its mounting locations BEFORE you free up upper control arm ball joint. Whole wheel hub will drop and can possibly damage them.
Remove upper bolt joint. It's 14mm on one side and E-torx I believe 40 on the other I've used simple puller to pop that joint up. Now the fun part.
I have done this job with my friend. So he helped me to pull knuckle down while I have removed that strut mounting "fork" from the strut itself. This is the part where I have had the most trouble with. It felt like it's almost too much force you need to use to pull whole wheel him with suspension downwards. It'll be fine. Someone her said it used bar and some floor jack as a leverage and pulled it down that way.
Once you pull it down you can remove that fork that strut is mounted to. Than you unbolt top three bolts under the hood holding this strut and remove it from the car.
Same thing if you transfer your current top strut mounts to the new strut. Mark locations of where spring ends are. Top and bottom. There is a slit at the bottom of the strut that slides into the mounting fork at the bottom. Make sure it lines up properly in correlation to the top mount. Otherwise it will not go in properly. Ask me how I know
Put everything back in reverse order.
So in the end. Yes. LCI shocks with springs fit and work well confirmed by me