So I ordered a sway bar disconnect kit from a Mud member and installed it last night. The 80 series, despite being solid front axle, doesn't have as good of articulation as you would think; this owing mainly to the simple trailing arm setup in the front that is better for weight loading and towing than the more flexible 5 link systems you find in vehicles like the wrangler (its also one of the reasons the wrangler sucks for towing and weight hauling). However, another big limiting factor is that the front sway bar is very VERY effective in keeping such a big heavy trck level in the corners and even though its a floating mount design it still limits wheel travel significantly. In addition to pure wheel travel it also has a tendency, as all sway bar equipped vehicles do, to attempt to level the vehicle on un-level ground, resulting in lots of tilt and reducing the effectiveness of the amazing rear axle articulation (5 link).
The kit is pretty simple, its just 2 brackets that bolt to existing holes (doesn't work on 91-92 models...no holes) with an eyelet for the bar. The idea is that you replace the bolts that mount the bar ends to the axle with clevis pins and then you can unhitch is and pin the bar ends to the chassis where its out of play. To install you have to remove some clips that hold on the ABS sensor lines and I need to make sure the driveshaft doesn't it the swaybar on full droop (hasn't yet) but otherwise it was easy peasy to install and I can already tell from my VERY brief experience its going to make a big difference for articulation and possibly a big difference in smoothness and keeping the truck level.
One of my wife's biggest hangups for going out on trails with my is that she doesn't like tilt, I'm hoping that doing this will reduce the tilt on anything but side slopes, which i generally avoid anyway.
Anywhere, here is my informal testing. I was blown away how far up this mount and how easily I did it. Should hopefully make using my lockers a less frequent event.
And some old flex pics with stock tire size (31.5) and saggy stock springs.