do you feel disconnecting the front for the small travel gain is worth the added body roll? When you say stock, does my setup still fit under that category...it still is running stock a arms and front end components.
I don't think you would ever see any measurable performance difference from 1/2" difference in travel. Disconnecting the front is not going give you more body roll. You will see less, because if, for instance, the right front wheel rides up over a large boulder, the RF suspension is free to compress
independently of the other front wheel. Therefore it has less effect on the attitude of the truck. This applies ONLY to crawling. At speed, on or off road, you will see insane body roll, and will probably roll and die!
Now if you go over the same boulder with the bar connected, then as the RF tries to compress, the bar is forcing the LF to compress also. This will cause one of two things to happen, depending on the angle of the ground, weight/balance of the truck and its load, etc. Either the whole truck will lean to the left as the RF rides up on the boulder, possibly lifting the RR, or the truck will stay more level and the whole front end will come off the ground, possibly lifting the LF wheel.
For illustrative purposes let's imagine a truck on level ground with a boulder in front of the right front wheel. Imagine if you had a straight horizontal line on the ground we'll call the "ground plane," and then another line under the tires we'll call the "wheel plane." Now imagine another horizontal line across the body of the truck. We'll call that one the "body plane." As long as we are sitting on level ground all three will be on the same plane. The job of the stability bar is to keep the wheel and body planes the same in relation to each other. Forgive my crude art skills, but here is a sketch to illustrate:
First, sitting on level ground:
Then we drive up on a boulder with the bar connected. As the RF rises onto the boulder and tries to compress, the bar is going to either (A):
Force the LF to compress as well, which will lean the truck and possibly lift the RR:
Or (B):
Prevent the RF from compressing, which will lift the whole front:
Essentially you are trying to compress both front suspensions with just the RF wheel. Whether it does A or B will depend on the angle of the ground plane, weight distribution of the vehicle, etc.
Now if we go over the boulder with the bar disconnected, then the RF is free to compress independently, with much less effect on the body plane:
I hope that all makes sense. It is 0130 in the morning, so if not I'll blame it on that!
