Yes sway bar. I am concerned because it was very difficult to remove from the stock strut and I am just thinking out loud since it’s a May 2020 build which was in in the 3000 ra
I didn’t removed the entire sway bar links so I couldn’t have mixed them up. I had only removed the top 18mm nut and that’s it. But I had to fight it for 15 minutes to remove the sway bar from the strut.
Is it possible you're having this trouble because there's no weight from the car on the suspension? It's often that case that things are weirdly misaligned when the car is raised on jacks instead of on a platform lift.
Related to this is that generally when working on suspension links, arms and bushings, it's good to do the final tightening when the car is sitting as normal, on the wheels/tires and not with the springs pushing down on the out-of-position suspension members. This doesn't apply so much to ball joints, but if you tighten up a control-arm bushing with the suspension unloaded like that, it will then be twisted and under a lot of torsion stress in the intended "rest" position after you lower the car to the ground. This will mess up the intended ride characteristics and greatly shorten the life of the bushing.