My opinion is that you do it the way the manual says, which is to remove the A-Arm bolt. I tried all sorts of different ways and wasted a few days, and in the end ended up doing it the manual way anyway, although I haven't tried removing the swaybar. The problem with doing it by removing the swaybar is that it's still a pain removing the strut assembly through the upper A-Arm. After removing the A-Arm bolt, it took less than 15 minutes to remove the strut, replace the springs, and put it back in. The hardest part was removing the A-Arm nut. Had to use a long breaker bar.