"lack of maintenance" on a sealed part?

~18k miles and 400 autocross runs with wide sticky tires. "abuse" would be a good way to put it.

Ha. I had the same experience when going to my parents' house at 700 feet. Wild. I'm hoping a header and tune will get me close to the sea level feeling after this race season.

Over the weekend I installed Pedders tophats on the Trueno edition. Incredibly easy on this car, no need for a spring compressor!

Removed the sway bars, one of the end links will need to be replaced (rusty bolt). I will have to drive slowly until the links arrive to install new ones.

How did you do?

There is very little preload on the springs. If you remove the nut on the top of the struts whlie the car is on the ground and jack up the front end slowly, the tophats separate easily. You will have to remove one endlink to swaybar connection, then you can simply line up the strut with the new tophat and slowly lower the vehicle and start the top nut...

Thanks. I wish I knew before, competing the front sway bar change today.

Installed RCE sway bars. Front 20mm dia and rear 16mm dia.
Front on hardest and rear on middle.

Added camber bolts.

Now, need to take to a good alignment shop.

I wouldn't get your hopes up. I had the exact same thought when I bought the car....just want to feel "stock sea level". I'm tuned on 91 with JDL EL header/OP/catted&resonated FP, and CSG 70mm touring catback. Intake charcoal filter removed with grimmspeed drop in filter. Granted I requested a conservative tune, but it really doesn't feel much quicker. Higher rev limit has been super handy though. If I had to do it again, I'd just get a tune and an axle-back.

On a brighter note, I finally moved on from the V601 to a 615k+ this season and somehow managed to drop nearly 2 full seconds on a 1 mile course. Insanity!