Front Sway Bar Installed

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It's been over 8 years since I have owned the car and I still have the stock sway bars on it! So I got a set of the Ireland Engineering sway bars and after looking at them for about a month I mustered the courage to dive in and do the install of the front bar.

I read over the instructions and it looked pretty straightforward. The first line simply said "1. Remove Stock sway bar.".

Simple I thought. Well not so simple lol. It took a little dexterity, knuckle scraping and some swearing...and the bar was loose...but how do I get it out of the car!?!? I actually placed a car to Ken Blasko who put me on the phone with Tommy the 2002 guru and told me to coax it between the tow hook and the front lip of the body. After a bit of work I finally got it out. Luckily the new bar has different mounts and it won't be nearly as difficult to put the new bar in...so I thought.

The new mounting blocks bold directly to the frame. The frame comes to a "V" in the front, and the blocks are square. So it's a bit of a challenge to get the block in because the "V" in the frame prevented the block from seating perfectly. After a little grinding and some patience (not) I got the blocks and and then I grabbed the torque wrench to torque down the 2 bolts on each mounting block. I'm sure you can guess what happened next...one bolt broke off... F@$k!!! I'll have to get an easy out and extract that bolt from the frame.

Broken bolt on the mounting block for the front sway bar

I got the bar attached to the block and then it was time to attach the end links to the bar and finish it up. Sounds like it's the easy part...but nope...even more swearing and head scratching. The end links were always about an inch from baking able to go into the holes on the sway bars and I was using the less aggressive setting. I was lowering the car and raising the car and finally after a lot of adjusting I finally got both end links attached to the sway bar. Done...

All in all it took about e hours and if I had done it before maybe half the time. Now on to the rear which again looks simple but the word in the forums is it's more difficult than the fronts. Wish me luck!

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