I have been wanting to upgrade my shocks for a while now. About 3 years ago, shortly after purchasing the truck...I purchased some OEM Rancho shocks and installed them. I was happy with the improvement from the worn ones that were on there, but after hearing much about the Bilstein 5100's I wanted to give them a try. Got a full set for front and rear for a decent price and worked on installing the fronts yesterday.
Along with this, I had purchased a set of struts off of a member and was going to use the newer parts to refresh my struts a bit.
I will give a before and after then go into some more detail.
Before:

After:

I like how these turned out. Painting the spring was just sort of a fun twist I thought I would add to dress them up a little.
The take off shocks I had gotten came off a 2015 silverado. I was unsure of what difference the may have from the nnbs truck shocks since they had different numbers. Here is a shot side by side and you can immediately see some differences:

The location of the lower spring mount on the body is a different height on the new shocks. The shaft is a bit longer and has a longer threaded section.
Secondly there are big differences in the upper mount:


Additionally the upper shock bump stop was longer on the newer one. I tried to use it but could not get the shaft to push up through to get the upper bolt on...so took it back apart and reused my old ones.

The newer style on the left have a much taller central mount location making the shorter thread a concern using with an older style shock. After discovering this, I ended up reusing my old ones...but the spring seat and boot along with the plastic upper spring seat were the same and reused.
After I got the old shock off one side, I used the weight of the truck to dis-assemble the strut assemblies I had bought.

Then I got after prepping and painting the springs.
First I sanding them down good then wiped them down with alcohol.

Sprayed them with some self etching primer

Then started applying the GM DE 1608 high temp ceramic blue I had:


Got the ring height settings moved and transferred over the lower spring mounts. Here is where I maybe added some height from the set up I had before. The lower mounts from the previous picture lift the bottom of the spring some from the older location.

About ready to install

Pics of final result:





Hopefully get to the rears today. Ran over my time I had and went to the NHRA drag races with my son yesterday evening.