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An aluminum body reduces unsprung weight slightly. You have to remember that only part of the damper weight is unsprung. It also helps to dissipate heat better than a steel body. But an aluminum bodied damper wouldn't be a good idea for the front suspension. It would have to be made too thick to handle the bending loads it is going to be seeing as a strut. I'm sure it could be made to work but it wouldn't be as strong as a steel piece in a place where you really need the strength.
And reducing unsprung weight has a bigger effect on compression.
As for your other choices, I don't have much to say about the Gr3's because I never saw shock data on them. So I can't say if the damping is in the right range or if the adjusters work the way they're supposed to.
The Koni yellows would probably be fine for what you want to do. Which you never really said, you just said you want better handling. But you also threw out the 28 series, so what exactly are you trying to do? Have a well handling car that is fun? Spend a lot of money making your car handle awesome and race it? If you just want a fun car, then the 28 series are putting you in a much higher price range. I mean one shock is the same price as a cheap set of coilovers. But you have full control over the damping curve and how you want it to look. But if you don't know what you're doing in this respect, paying all that money and then paying someone else to set it up for you wouldn't be worth it.
Also, unless I missed it, you didn't say what springs you wanted to run. And depending on that, they might be too stiff for the yellows. Like PJ said, you should look into the 8611 series if you want an adjustable setup. But you're going to have to figure out how to mount them to the car and all of that. But it would be a better damper.
As for sway bars, a front bar probably isn't needed. The front bar is very stiff to begin with. But it also depends on the spring you want to run. I won't get into my whole thing about sway bars and how I feel about them. But if you want to upgrade go with the progress bars. I only say these over the whitelines because I never got to test the whiteline bars. I tested stock, ST, progress and Tanabe. And Progress were by far the best. ST's sucked and were stupid heavy. The Tanabes were boring and overpriced. The Progress are adjustable and can give you as soft as a stock front bar/rear HICAS bar setup, which I think is the best match with common spring rates, and then gets stiffer from there. I think it gets stiffer than the Tanabe and close to the stiffness of the ST, but I don't remember and don't feel like looking up my numbers again.
Tim
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