Sorry, can't help ya with a stock pic, but can commiserate; I had a whale of a time getting those endlinks to fit right and clear everything. The angle of the sway bar is only important in that you don't want it to hit anything when (a) you turn the wheel, (b) when the wheel goes up and down, and (c) when both of these things happen. Here's the thing, though, if you didn't put it in the right spot, you wouldn't have a flapping noise, you'd most likely have a violent clunk when it would come in contact with some other metallic thing (ask me how I know).

I do hope that someone can get a pic of the sway bar in stock alignment (and the car on the ground) for you, though -- would at least eliminate that as a possibility for you. If I see one "in the wild" with the owner too far away to ask me what I'm doing, I'll crawl under and snap a pic for ya.

 

Lift the entire front end, wheels off the ground (wheels off entirely preferentially) and turn the steering wheel left and right while looking for hits on the sway bar.

The sway bar and end link clearance is fractions of inches. This is an area people have the hardest time dialing in.

Also check your sway bar bushing for being worn.

 

Thanks @emanon. Your post inspired me to check back to the Rallitek site and read some comments on the end links. There were some comments on the instructions and different lengths and such. So I called Dallin@Rallitek and he said to adjust the endlinks to about 11.5" for my application. So I went out to the garage to begin work.

Meanwhile, @Robert.Mauro taps into my security camera and sees me working on the Ascent and decides to post some other useful info hoping to get some of the solution glory. I kid, but yes I also checked the bushings at an earlier inspection and they seem to be holding up just fine. They are the aftermarket ones and I also have a softer or harder set I can put on once these give out.

At any rate. when playing around under the car I could tell that it was endlink/swaybar related as i could kinda pull on it and tell something was possibly loose in addition to the possible interference due to length. So I did what Dallin said, put the car back together and drove a few miles and enjoyed some noise free turns and straightaways for a change.

Was glad it was just install error (by me) and not really a part or car failure.

Thanks again forum community!