I talked to Terry about this and the reason that he believes the brackets are stressed so much is because the stock brackets are too small to accept the 24mm bushings. Basically, the stock brackets clamp down too much on the bushings which in turn clamps down on the bar too much and does not allow for natural movement of the bar. You have to remember that those brackets are just support brackets and are there to help keep the bar in place, nothing else.
There is nothing inherently wrong with the strength of the stock plates it is just that the new bushings are simply too large for the brackets, hence why you should upgrade the backing plate to accept the bigger bracket.
For example, IIRC there are some Mercedes' running out there with sway bars bigger or equal to the 24mm bar available to us and their support brackets are made out of a thinner piece of metal but have no breakage problems. This hints that the problem in our car is simply a fitment issue between the large bushing and small bracket, if the said bracket were sized to fit the 24mm bushing no one would be experiencing this problem.
SpectraSVT:
To my knowledge, there are only a few cases of sway bars disconnecting from the subframe while plenty of people are running sans problems. So I think that Terry and Aussie did all they needed to do by recommending that the upgraded brackets be used, if you chose or will choose to ignore that recommendation then go ahead...but don't act all bewildered when they did make a point of telling everyone that upgraded brackets were recommended for proper fitment.
