Rear shock problem, overextended?
 

I have bilstien with eibach springs. So I took off my rear lower control arms to replace the bushings, and I noticed one of the arms was hard to take off. When I got it off, I found out the shock was still pushing on the control arm even when lifted and after taking off the control arm and shock bolts the shock over extended about and inch or two past the control arm connecting point, and also was crooked, not aligning to the control arm correctly.


I also noticed that side of the car felt higher lately too. I'm pretty damn sure when I installed it, it aligned perfectly and was not overextending.


So I'm wondering if anyone has seen this type of thing before? Or knows what's wrong. It doesn't seem to be blown out, but something is definitely wrong. Could the top hat part have actually unscrewed itself? But it doesn't make any noise, but I don't get how the shock could extend so much longer.


Anyways, the problem is obvious and I'm going to take the shocks off soon to find out, but this is a strange problem I have not seen before. Any ideas?