I've had the racing beat rear bar on my 2001 protege ES for a while now... maybe like 10,000 miles:
I spent like no time putting it on when i first got it- i used the stock MSP bushings (that were probably like over 5 years old... lolz) and brackets and it went right on, i didn't notice any problems putting it on my ES rear subframe.
Then one day i wanted to see how fast i could go while i swerve around a dead animal on the highway without loosing control of the car (as well as how close i could get to it without hitting it- went like 50 mph or something
) and my super old OEM bushings both snapped. I had some serious clunking after that...
...So i bought some red urethane bushings from AWR, and when i took the bar off to put those on somehow the job had transformed into a complete b****. The mounting points for the rear sway bar brackets on the rear subframe have one stud, and one bolt. I think the MSP has two studs sticking out of it...
When you take the bolt out, on the inside of the sub-frame there's a nut welded in there that the bolt screws into. One of mine snapped off inside the subframe, so i used a wrench with some tape on the end of it to get it out. I don't know how to prevent that from happening... maybe some wd40 or some similar compound... but just a heads up: it super sucks when one of those welded in nuts snaps off...
After that i managed to forget how the brackets went on. The sway bar brackets have a round hole on one end, and a slotted hole on the other. Someone here with an MSP or an MP3 will know... but i can't remember if the slotted end goes on the bottom or the side of the rear sub frame... that's something else to watch out for. I'm not sure how important it is to get the bracket orientation right, but i feel like it's gotta' count for something.
I used 20mm urethane bushings on the stock sedan subframe... which is the same as the one on your p5. When i tried to put the MSP sway bar brackets on the subframe, they sort of fit... but not quite. The sedan's OEM sway bar was smaller, and had a smaller bracket- so i had to bend/pinch the MSP brackets to fit on my car. THis didn't make me happy... and my bushings are unhappy as well. There's actually a bit of a gap between the "base"... or the flat part... what ever you'll call it of my bushings and the subframe, which freaks me out to no end. Sure, i didn't get any problems from it...BUT IT'S SO NOT CLEAN.
...Nothing on my car is clean though, i use it to drive around recyclables i find on the street that people didn't want to throw away. That's not clean... but the sway bar thing strikes me as a bit of a problem.
AWR makes a sort of adapter that is supposed to get around my problem- the adapter bolts up to the subframe, and the sway bar/brackets attach to the adapter. There's also the "Clunk fix" kit that relocates the sway bar mounting points to the outside of the subframe (right under where the subframe bolts to the car's frame) in an effort to put less stress on the bushings, giving them a longer life and it's supposed to make the bar function better.
You can do the sway bar at any time- you don't have to do it with the struts.
You don't really have to do the front end-links when you do the rears, unless the fronts need replaced. The front endlinks are an easy instal, but the front sway bar bushings are something else... You can replace them, there's a write up on here somewhere on how to do it, but i believe it requires a lot of trying to get a wrench and a hand in a very inconvenient place. When i'm under my car, i can't even see where the thing mounts to the front subframe...
Oh... and you've totally got a front sway bar
No clunking with the progress eh? Hmmm... interesting. The progress looks similar to the OEM bar on the p5/ES (with the sport suspension package) and the racing beat bar is a bit different of a design, maybe the racing beat design wears out the bushing faster...
...either way, i love my racing beat bar, clunks squeaks and all. I want the front one now...
And sorry i can't tell you what to buy -_- i forgot all the end link lengths...
