Replacing front shocks and springs?

I'm in the process of changing out the front suspension  on my recently acquired 2005 9N3 Polo. One (off) side has an original shock with a 2013 spring (very rusty indeed for that age), the other side already has replacement shock and a much less rusty 2013 spring.

The point of this post isn't to tell you how to do the job on this or any other type of car, there are plenty of guides all around the forum and youtube, but just to add a detail that may not have been picked up on often elsewhere.

The shocks I've bought are Sachs brand, from a reputable source so I doubt they are fakes, the springs are KYB, again not suspected of being knock-offs.  Both have minor  shortcomings that can easily be fettled and fixed prior to starting the job itself. 

First the springs :- I'm not sure whether they are painted or powder coated, but there are marks from where they were hung up while getting coated/painted, which leaves a couple of spots on each spring that are virtually bare metal.  A couple of dabs of paint x a couple of coats and you've eliminated a built-in corrosion starting point.  Note that my photo only shows one patch per spring, but there's another on the inner side of the coil about 90° round from those.

On the shocks, there are some tabs that are stamped out of the bottom seat and bent upwards to locate the bottom coil of the springs.  Both tabs on both shocks had nasty sticky-outy burrs from the stamping process that looked sufficient to bite through the paint on the spring as soon as it is installed. Fettle smooth and repaint carefully.

Apologies for the focus of the photo, which failed to show the worst burr on the far tab, with any clarity whatsoever.  That was the one that first caught my attention.

Check the areas just inboard of these tabs, where the bottom face of the lowest coil will rest too, there were also small burrs there on these. De-burr and repaint.  Don't skimp on the repainting or you'll just change the start of the corrosion from being on the spring to being at these spots where you've gone back to bare metal by deburring.

OCD, moi? I prefer to think of it as 'attention to detail'.