Best Whiteline Sway Bars for 2013-2018 Ford Focus ST Guide

If you own a 2013-2018 Ford Focus ST, you already know the chassis has serious potential the factory left on the table. The 2.0L EcoBoost makes 252 hp out of the box, but the soft front sway bar lets the nose plow into corners, and the equally soft rear lets the back end stay flat when you actually want it to rotate. A properly sized aftermarket sway bar set is the single most cost-effective way to wake this car up — and Whiteline has dominated the Focus ST sway bar market for over a decade. In our Tampa, FL shop we install these kits almost every week, so we put together this 2026 buyer’s guide covering the full Whiteline lineup for the 13-18 Focus ST, plus the Eibach and ST Suspensions alternatives worth knowing about.

Why Upgrade the Sway Bars on a 2013-2018 Focus ST?

A sway bar (also called an anti-roll bar or anti-sway bar) is a torsion spring that connects the left and right sides of an axle. When the chassis rolls in a corner, the bar twists and transfers load between the two wheels, reducing body roll and changing how each axle grips. On the Focus ST, the factory tuning is deliberately conservative for ride comfort and to keep insurance underwriters happy — the stock front bar is around 22mm hollow, and the rear is around 21mm. That softness is why the ST plows mid-corner and feels reluctant to rotate on throttle lift.

Stiffening the rear sway bar reduces rear roll, which transfers more grip to the front and dials out understeer. Stiffening the front bar firms up turn-in. The trick is balance: too much rear and you get snap oversteer on a front-wheel-drive car; too little and the ST still pushes. That’s why the matched Whiteline kit is so popular — the front and rear rates are tuned together. If you only want to spend money on one bar, the rear bar gives the biggest improvement on a stock or near-stock Focus ST, because it’s the most direct fix for the car’s lift-off-throttle laziness.

At a Glance: Our Top Whiteline Picks for the 13-18 Focus ST

Here is the lineup we recommend most often at NLP Performance, ordered from the do-it-all kit down to the supporting hardware. Every part below ships from the U.S. and fits all 2013-2018 Ford Focus ST hatchbacks (MK3 chassis, 2.0L EcoBoost).

Top Pick: Whiteline BMK012 Front & Rear Sway Bar Kit

Buying both bars as the matched BMK012 kit is the move 9 out of 10 Focus ST owners should make. You save almost $230 versus piecing the bars together separately, and Whiteline already did the math on front-to-rear balance so the car doesn’t turn into a tail-happy hand grenade on cold tires. The front bar is a 24mm solid alloy steel bar with a single tuning hole, and the rear is a 24mm solid bar with three adjustment holes letting you dial in soft, medium, or hard rear roll stiffness.

Front-Only Pick: Whiteline 24mm HD Adjustable Front Swaybar

If you already swapped a rear bar (or you bought a used Focus ST that came with one), the front-only Whiteline 24mm bar finishes the chassis without doubling up. Going from the OEM 22mm hollow front to Whiteline’s 24mm solid bar firms up turn-in noticeably and reduces the “floppy nose” feel under hard trail-braking. The single tuning hole keeps install simple, and a stock-replacement style means no clearance issues with the K-frame, downpipe, or aftermarket headers.

Rear-Only Pick: Whiteline 24mm HD Rear Adjustable Swaybar

If you only have $150 to spend on suspension this month, put it here. The rear bar is the single biggest understeer fix you can bolt on to a 2013-2018 Focus ST. Whiteline’s 24mm solid rear bar offers three adjustment holes (soft, medium, hard), so you can start at the softest setting on stock tires and dial it harder as you add grip with summer rubber. Most ST owners run it on the middle hole — it’s the sweet spot for a daily-driven car on a mix of dry roads, rain, and the occasional autocross.

Don’t Skip the Endlinks: Whiteline Adjustable Link Kits

The OEM Focus ST endlinks are a known weak point. They’re plastic-ended, non-adjustable, and they clunk within 30,000 miles on bumpy roads. Once you install a stiffer bar, that clunk gets louder fast because the new bar transfers more force through the link. Whiteline’s adjustable steel-ball endlinks fix three things at once: they let you preload the bar correctly after a lowering spring install, they kill the clunk, and they’ll outlast the car.

The Cheap Upgrade Everyone Forgets: Mount Bushings

When you pull the rear bar off, you have a 5-minute window to swap in fresh greaseable polyurethane mount bushings — the kit costs $18.97. Skip it and the new bar will eventually rotate against the old rubber bushings, deforming them and killing roll stiffness. The Whiteline service kit includes two greaseable urethane mounts and a sachet of synthetic grease, and you’ll feel the difference the first time you re-grease them at the next oil change.

Whiteline vs Eibach vs ST Suspensions: How They Stack Up

Whiteline isn’t the only player in the 13-18 Focus ST sway bar space. Eibach offers a 27mm front / 25mm rear matched kit and a rear-only 25mm option, and ST Suspensions sells a single rear bar. Here’s the head-to-head on the matched kits.

The Eibach kit (sold as the 27mm front / 25mm rear Anti-Roll Kit) is roughly the same price and goes one diameter thicker on the front, which produces sharper turn-in but more stock-shock loading. Eibach uses sealed rubber bushings — quieter long-term but you can’t service them. Whiteline’s greaseable polyurethane bushings transmit more road texture but give you a clearer connection to the chassis, which most ST owners actually want. The third option, the ST Suspensions rear-only bar, is essentially a single fixed 19mm hollow bar for $299 — lighter on adjustment than Whiteline’s $151.74 rear, so we usually point shoppers at the Whiteline rear bar instead. If you want the matched kit experience and the strongest dealer support network in the U.S., the Whiteline BMK012 is the safer bet.

Installation: What to Expect (and Why You Need an Alignment)

Both the front and rear Whiteline bars are direct bolt-on replacements for the stock units — no cutting, drilling, or chassis modification. The rear is the easier of the two: jack up the back, drop the rear beam from one mount, swap the bar, and bolt the new mount bushings in. Plan on 45-60 minutes for the rear by itself. The front is trickier because the bar lives on top of the subframe; most DIYers lower the subframe two inches with a transmission jack to slide the new bar through. That adds about an hour for a careful first-timer.

Critical step most people miss: with the car back on the ground at full ride height, the adjustable endlinks must be set so the new bar sits in its neutral position — not preloaded. A preloaded bar pulls grip off one wheel even when you’re driving in a straight line, which is exactly the opposite of what you want. After the install, get a four-wheel alignment within 100 miles. The new bar changes how the suspension cycles through its travel, and even small toe changes will eat your tires fast on a Focus ST that lives on summer rubber. If you’re in the Tampa area, our shop can do the install and the alignment in the same visit.