If you wrap your swaybar with teflon plumbing tape where the bushing goes, you won't need to lubricate every year.

 

You know, I actually tried that. And after a year or so the Teflon tape just disintegrated. I'm of a mind that it neither helps nor hurts.

 

Update:

This solved the problem for maybe a week, then the noise came back.

I had the car in for some warranty work, and asked the dealer to look at it. They said it was normal, especially on lowered cars

The noise continued to drive me increasingly crazy.

I decided to replace the end links and following Rochester, ordered replacement sway bar bushings from Eibach.

The end links had a lot of play. Replacement Moog links were seemingly more heavy duty and had Zerk fittings, so they were easy to lube. Unfortunately, this didn't solve the clunking noise, which had grown constant at this point, over any elevation change. Cost, about $80.

Two days later, I replaced the sway bar bushings. Thus far, the noise is gone.

I think I finally found the root cause in the front sway bar bushings. Over the last 5+ years, the inside of the bushing, the grooves, had worn flat in several spots. This created two problems, it allowed the sway bar to move just a small fraction of an inch against a poly bushing, and second, with the grooves worn flat, the lubricant was being pushed out, exaggerating the contact point.

At least that's my home mechanic diagnosis

 

Glad you were finally able to track down the source of your noise, Lego.


I had the same thing happen to my Hotchkiss sway bar bushings... The grooves that hold the grease eventually started to smooth out and then relubing the bushings only solved the problem for a few months before all of the grease was expelled from the bushings and then the noise would return. I've now replaced my front bushings twice in almost 10 years and the rear bushings once over the same time period.