The front sway bar on my brat hits the FT4WD 5 speed transmission I've used in my swap. I looked at modifying the sway bar, but as I read it sway bars are tempered and spring steel and other metallurgical things I don't understand and cutting and welding it makes it not work as well. The place it hits the transmission is the spot where it climbs up into the subframe to allow the exhaust to pass underneath. I learned that Addco made a performance sway bar for the EA81 cars including Brat, and it is much stiffer than stock and larger, at 1" in diameter. Because of the size of it, Addco made the loop drop down instead of up, which means it will not interfere with the transmission. So I tried to order one through JEGS, but they cancelled the order after a few days saying it was no longer stocked and not in production. So I did the next best thing and contacted Addco directly. I asked if they would custom make one for me or how many orders would it would take to get another production run. I got an e-mail response that said they were "very unpopular" and that I was the first person to inquire about them in 5 years, and they did not have any more stock and were not going to make another production run. However, he said, "do not despair" and offered to sell me the control bar, which is the one they check all the production runs against to ensure accuracy. Since they were not going to produce more they wouldn't need it. So he had it sent off to get blasted and powder coated since it had been collecting dust for years, and a few days later I received the last front and rear performance sway bars for EA81! 
The Brat did not come with a rear sway bar stock, so I'm excited to see how it handles with less body roll front and rear. The front bar clears the transmission nicely as I hoped, and the rear fits perfectly into place. The front bar was mistakenly supplied with two wrong brackets, but I can't blame them for mistakenly picking the order, they probably don't have much practice on this particular setup. New front brackets should arrive soon. Seeing these new parts and high quality bushings makes me realize that this car is actually 38 years old and every piece of rubber needs replaced. That can wait for a while though! Lets just call the service life 40 years and that should give me some time to enjoy it before it needs more attention.
I set the Brat down from jack stands and put it on a spare set of rims so I could compress the suspension for installation and still have room to roll around underneath. The flash makes the Brat look rustier than it is, this car is still amazingly solid, just surface rust present. When I was at the junkyard the other week pulling some parts they guy asked me what Subaru I was working on and he said about 15 years ago they had someone drive in a Brat to sell for scrap and they used it as a yard car for several years without doing anything to it until one day they were blasting through some tall grass and hooked the oil pan on a truck frame laying hidden in the weeds. The sad eventual fate of all novelty vehicles is to end up at the junkyard.
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