Well I'm not really sure what you mean by an axle bar, but I think we are saying the same thing. Yes, I did have a diff drop installed at the time. I did 2.5" if remember correctly, but it might have been 3", it'd been a long time. Even with that my cvs were running constant 30 degree angles just going down the street. I was trying to say in my post above that because of that angle, every time the shaft rotates it cause the balls to do exactly what you are saying-slide back and forth in the cv cups, but it's also causing the cages to move all over the place so they can. If you have a cv with no boot on and look inside when you move it and it's at a high angle you can see this plain as day.