Whiteline Rear Swaybar with Whiteline "Heavy Duty" Mounts
Project 06 STi Part 1: Sway Bars Swaybars and Endlinks Installed and Reviewed!
June 12, 2008
We decided to go with whiteline for a couple reasons. When choosing a sway bar, you're presented with two options, hollow or solid. We went with Whiteline's solid sway bars for the reassurance of durability. While hollow bars are lighter, we didn't want to take the chance of taking a corner too hard, at a weird angle, or hitting a bump that could possibly bend the bars. Whiteline also has done a lot of research and development on thier sway bars. You can ready more about them by visiting: www.whiteline.com.au.
When deciding which heavy duty endlink to go with we ended up with Kartboy. We went with Kartboy for a number of reasons. We liked the idea of having a "bushing" type endlink rather than "ball bearing", or "pillowball" type endlink. Kartboy's bushing endlink served as a quieter, more streetable solution to our endlink options.
Installation on the whiteline sway bars was fairly simple, but time consuming. There are a lot of things you need to remove in order to get the sway bars in the proper position. Those things include the splash guard, subframe brace, and finally the cross member brace (it's often used as a jacking point for the front of the car). After that, you're on to removing your OEM swaybar and endlinks.
You'll be able to remove everything with a good set of wrenches, sockets, and alan wrenches. There is one thing we found on the STi that you need to prepare for. On the OEM rear endlinks, you'll need to squeeze some needle nose vice-grips around the head of the bolt on the base of the endlink and lock them in. Then you'll need to use a socket wrench to loosen the nut. If you try to just loosen the nut without the vice-grips, the whole thing will just turn. That was the only tricky part we ran into. Both Whiteline sway bars and the Kartboy endlinks fit flawlessly.
After putting the sway bars on we were anxious to get it on the road and test them out. Taking corners we could immediately feel the difference. Including the now almost non-existent body roll and the ability to take corners at much higher speeds. Along with these we also noticed an amazing improvement in response, even when turning the steering wheel just slightly. Overall we found that sway bars should definately be first on your list of suspension mods. These alone made a world of difference.
