Nick;
to make it easier I removed the bolt holding the bottom arm (the alloy one) to the hub, it gave much better access. If you can get both rear wheels high up in the air then this probably isn't necessary but if you're doing one at a time I'd recommend it. There is no adjustment on the bolt in question so no need to re-align.
HTH.
Well I failed /gave up.
I tried one side, dropping the shock and started to remove the bottom arm to hub bolt. As soon as one end of the bolt cleared the arm hole the whole lower bush keeled over with the in-built tension in this lower assembly.
At this point I decided that if I fully removed the bolt then working on my own I was very likely not to be able to get the bush back in the yoke and get the bolt all the way through again. As it was getting the single now out of alignment bolt end back proved quite difficult to do on my own.
After lunch I thought, OK lets get the whole back of the car in the air, drop both shocks and now hopefully the anti-roll bar moving on both sides at the same time should allow the suspension enough droop to be able to take the springs out. Still no go. Both sides bottomed out even before the brake hose became an issue.
With both sides dropped the twist tension in the lower bush was a little better and I could see that by jacking the arm upwards the twist reduced. However working on my own I can see that getting the hub bottom bush back into the lower arm yoke was probably still ging to be a two person job so I decided to quit whilst I was ahead.
Car has to be mobile for tomorrow so could not risk getting stuffed with no one to help.
She is now booked in at my local independent guys (who i know well). They also have a really neat 'one side entry' spring clamp so with luck should be just able to insert, compress, withdraw.
I did try spring clamps (worm gear style) but the rod ends got in the way. As the spring came down the rods ends still fouled the bodywork/chassis around the spring.
I'm actually quite pissed off because normally I don't like failing and certainly not when it comes to cars. However I'm no long the spring chicken I used to be and with back problems and arthritis in the wrists and handss my ability in both time duration and continual loading is well below what I used to enjoy.
Least I've done the fronts and the car is mobile again. The fronts you probably think was the harder job, but these back springs are IMHO little buggers unless you have special spring clamps on another pair of strong hands with a mechanical mind behind them to help with re-assembling the hub/yoke joint.
I keep on thinking I've not done something obvious.........