So today I finally got around to my plans of pulling my endlinks off as I suspect they've been the source of some low-speed clunking noises. After I pulled them off, I noticed it took quite a serious amount of force to rotate the sway bar...and I know this is not "right". So off came the sway. I cleaned, lubed and put it back in...and the amount of effort to rotate it was still high. Back off it came. I have a spare set of (used) sway bar bushings and brackets, so I grabbed the rears and noticed right away that the spares I have a fair bit smaller than what was on the car....both the size/thickness of the bracket and bushing. I was in too much of a hurry and my hands were filthy to take pics...didn't want to dirty up my phone.

I ended up cleaning/greasing the smaller ones and upon installation, the sway bar rotated with no effort...it would not even stay parallel to the ground...it would rotate down on its own.

But I got to thinking, is there any known issue of using the smaller brackets/bushings? I remember quite a bit of talk regarding running a large bar and mount tabs breaking, but don't remember if said hardware is a contributing factor. I am running the 16mm FM rear bar...BTW.

On a side note- a cleaning and greasing of the end links made the clunking go away...