SlowLS430

Base 2004 LS430, 100K miles.

I bought the rear sport sway bar, sway bar bushings, and rear sport shocks for about $375 recently.
I hired a friend to install the shocks. The first one was difficult. The second was easy. It required the removal of the back seat.
The sway bar and new bushings went on very easily.

Thoughts on the swap:
- at some point the rear shocks had been replaced with KYB GR-2 shocks (news to me).. The OEM Sport replacements had the same level of bounce and rebound damping as the GR-2s. Now I have a used set of GR-2s for sale, in the Portland, OR area. The part numbers on my new sport shocks were different from the GR-2s, but in all other respects that I could tell, they were identical.
- I had GR-2s on a 2000 Sienna, and those GR-2s had NO REBOUND damping, so I'm glad these had some rebound damping. Still, given how similar they were to the installed GR-2s, it was a waste of time and money to make this replacement. Hopefully someone can use the GR-2s. They work fine.

I notice the car corners a little flatter with the bigger rear sway bar and fresh bushings.

Cheers.

Romanova

You know the sport bar is only 1mm larger than stock, right? The Ultra Racing would have been a better bet if you are going for a functional upgrade. Is there a reason why you didn't go with the sport springs to round things out?

SlowLS430

I wasn't concerned with the MM of the bar, but it's stiffness relative to the stock bar. For the price, the OEM sport sway bar was a good first step.

The sport springs were simply more money than I want to spend, plus, I believe in 'lightly sprung, stiffly damped'. Stiffer springs would have meant even stiffer dampers were required.. That's more $$ than I want to spend on a 15 yo car.

Now, I would be happy to spend money to quicken the very slow stock steering.