I was thinking that's what I had to do, kind of absurd though because that part of the frame was a serious pain in the ass to get together as the tolerances are not good (and the bolts are somewhat hard to reach on their own). It took me like 20 minutes to get everything lined up there in the first place. Wish I'd just fired the shock in then. Never had a frame where it was that much of a pain to remove a shock - and ive probably pulled a couple hundred shocks off bikes over the last decade or so.