warlord

Having this kit installed for less than a year ive run into a problem.
Every time i go out wheeling i come back to a loose pitman arm.

Now i know that some things can loosen up when trail riding. Thats fine. But the problem with the pitman arm is even if the bolt holding it on is still pretty tight the arm seems to have enough room to flex while on the shaft. That i dont think is right. It seems to me that the splines on the arm are not cut well enough to properly fit. I noticed that the stock pitman arm has splines that are cut into a collar of sorts and that collar is pressed into the arm.

At any rate i think that while this thing can wiggle it is causing damage to the splines of itself or the steering box shaft or both

so to correct this i have to try and find an alternative
are there better quality dropped pitman arm manufactures out there? Or is there a better way to fix this

Joisey

good question, this intrest me.

Full-Traction Suspension

I'm interested as well, never heard of this being an issue.

please send me pictures chris@fulltraction.com

warlord

What do you want to see a picture of?

It would be hard to pic the looseness
but ill try to snap something of use either tomarrow or friday

warlord

okay after some extensive photography and photoshopping i bring my findings

this one shows that there is indeed a hairline gap between the splines


after removing the arm
these show that there is some weardown in the arms splines which is probably the result of the freeplay.

the steering shaft is holding up better but has some wear


and finally to use my massive photoshopping skills i bring you the visual difference turning the wheel between freeplay results in


and yes that small amount of rocking in the arm results in 4" of steering freeplay before any further steering takes effect

i think the real problem here is that the pitman arm is just a hair too big for the steering shaft.

blockrockin

nice photography skills... does look like their is some play in their !

mkjeep

There have been reports of bad pitmans out there. I think there is only one or two manf of the jk pitman and all the lift companies get theirs from them. I seem to remeber either WOL or David from Northridge mentioning this. Someone may correct me if I'm wrong though. I say just get another one and try it.

Northridge4x4

I am pretty sure there is only one or two MFG's of pitman arms . I would call FT and talk to Steve.

David

KenB1010

This sounds more like a bent tie rod than a pitman arm problem. The more the tie rod bends the softer it gets and the more it continues to bend. When you get tired of constantly recentering your steering wheel try replacing your tie rod, this fixed my problem. Curry has a HD tie-rod that works well and is still adjustable.

warlord

i hqve the one with the eagle branded on it. I wonder if thats the better of the 2