Hi everyone, I appreciate all the input since I started this thread well over a year ago. The upgrade wasn't a priority so its taken me awhile to get around to it. As I said in my previous post, I went with the H&R 26 front and 24 rear. I looked on Yelp for some installers and noticed Yelp enables viewers to put out a request for what you are looking for and business can then get back to you with whatever info you ask. I thought it would be a waste of time where I would just get random replies from business that I would likely not use since I am pretty picky. I lucked out though. I was contacted by SGK Performance who I had never heard of. They are a recommended Tire Rack installer where I bought the sway bars. THeir shop is located on the grounds of Sears Point Raceway in Vallejo CA about 30 min from where I live. They mostly work on track cars, so they understood my concern for torquing everything to spec and not having issues that might occur from slack attention to doing everything correctly. They also use the shop manuals for everything they do rather than possibly make a mistake due to having enough experience that they probably would never need the manuals. I guess they knew how easy it can be to make wrong assumptions once you pretty much know what you are doing.
Anyway, they did the installation in about 5 hours including alignment which Faruk, the owner recommends when dropping the subframe. Total cost was $500 which I think was really generous on their part given the average shop time costs in our area. (local VW dealer charges $265/hr). Installation went well but they needed to do some material removal on the stock clamps to fit the H&R bushings. H&R used to include the OEM bushings but evidently do not anymore, at least not in my purchase.
OK enough of the boring part. Today I did my weekly drive up HWY 1 from the bay area CA up to my getaway. The last 60 miles or so is pretty winding, and so I was able to really see the difference on how the car behaves on curves. I was mostly just wanting a flatter feel and not so concerned with oversteer/understeer issues. I assumed that that only came into play when there was total break away, ie which end of the car goes in the ditch first. What I found was just a slight oversteer that felt very controlled and gave the feeling that the rear wheels were doing some of the steering. The rear end slipping out just a bit kind of points the car around the curve. The roads were a little wet so I was able to do this without a lot of speed. Overall, there is just much more of a feel of confidence in cornering. With the stock bars I kind of felt like I didn't have as much control over what the car might do. I'm sure experienced track guys get used to some amount of lean , as I have seen pics of 2 wheel cornering. Also I have noticed not one iota of ride harshness. No loss of absorbing bumps or potholes. It makes sense to me that this should have been the stock configuration. For all around driving, stiffer sway bars rather than stiffer springs on each wheel make the most sense IMO. In a few more months I'll be done with the stock Hankooks and look forward to some better tires. Past experience tells me that will be even more noticeable than the sway bar upgrade.