Since your asking about upgrades to handling without affecting ride, let me give you another piece of advice... solid body mounts. Huge difference in how the car feels.
When I did mine, wasn't sure exactly what to expect. Lot of conflicting information. The funny thing is, the people swore by them actually put them on their vehicle. The people that warned against, thinking it would affect the ride, of course never actually tried them. So I figured worst case maybe I'd sacrifice a little bit of ride quality to take out some body lean. But all this talk did make me curious, and since it was the only modification planned, I figured I'd do a good before/after comparison.
In the morning I setup everything to do the job. But before I actually swapped them, I took the car out. I had a habit of resting my hand on the pillar and would notice it would shake, so I did that on the before ride. I also drove it over many, many pot holes (in Detroit it's easier than trying to avoid them anyway
.). We had railroad tracks nearby, so it it over those as well. And finally, did a couple circles in both direction at higher than normal speeds to feel the handling.
Then I swapped them, and repeated. I was pleasantly surprised that it actually felt smoother over bumps and tracks. I think because it didn't have the flex happening between the subframe and the body causing more motion. Plus now instead of the flex, the force inputs all went to moving the wheel, making the shocks do the absorbing as they're meant to. But the body lean... wow what an improvement! And the pillar was much more stable.
Make sure you hit them with a lot of penetrating oil (a lot). I sprayed mine from all angles several days before I actually did the swap. Too many first hand stories of "I broke the but welded to the floor pan, now what do I do?" Use a breaker bar for leverage if you must, but gradually increase the pressure, never jerk or hit the ratchet.
