I've been sitting at about 2.5"'s now for about 10 months, and just ripped the passenger side cv about a month ago. Have a new one going in next week, but seriously contemplating doing a 1" diff drop. I didn't think I would need it as i'm only running 99' talls with a daystar 1" spacer, but i'm afraid i'm going to start tearing through boots now. As others have pointed out, the angle really doesn't look that bad, and on the day that it ripped I was unfortunate enough to have driven down a road that was in the process of being ripped out, so it could very well be that I just hit a severe hole and really put alot of stress on it for a split second which caused it to rip.
On a side note though, I still have a slight vibration in the steering wheel when I get up around 60 -65 mph. Does anyone have any feedback on having this same issue that's been resolved by adding the diff drop? I've been working on this issue for a while, and still have to swap out the steering rack guide (as talked about here
http://www.toyota-4runner.org/3rd-gen-t4rs/70884-how-replace-steering-rack-guide-pictures.html ), but i'm really thinking now that it might just be due to some awkward angles causing the vibration. Will the diff drop help?