The top should be down, so that there is no pressure on the cylinder, that I know, after that you just have to unbolt every thing that is holding the cylinder in place. Some trailers may be slightly different. Remove the hydraulic lines fist, then the cable pulleys on the cylinder, should be a strap holding the pulley end up remove it, remove the large pin in the end, have a jack or some thing to hold it up when removing stuff, I may have missed something so look around. It's raining here so I am not crawling under mine to check. Good luck.