Dropped pitman arm shot

[dieselponyexpress]

My steering felt very sloppy the last 1000 miles. Changed tierods, draglinks, wheel bearings and shimmed the king pin springs. Yesterday i discovered that the splined section on my skyjacker pitman arm (# CA50) was nearly complete stripped!
Splines on 20+ year old gear box shaft are like new.
I purchased the skyjacker product about 2 years ago. Had not thought of it as an item (over $100) which do fail that easy.

Anyone knows of another manufacturer?

If not i'll go with the original pitman arm (only 2.5" of lift) until the 4" and xover.

Walter

 

[rcamacho]

Sounds like the pinch bolt came loose thus causing the failure. I'm running the same arm with good results so far.

 

[thatK30guy]

I've had the exact same problem with the exact same pitman arm before on my '85 K30.

I contacted Skyjacker to see if I could get another one since some of their products have warrantees and some don't. The told me to ship the arm back so they could inspect it.

I got an email from them after they inspected it and they said they have some way of testing the arm to see if the proper torque was applied to tighten the nut/bolt to the minimum spec. They said mine was not tight enough so I had to buy another one.

After that, I made sure I used a torque wrench and went 5 ft. lbs. over their minimum. I haven't had any problems since.

 

[cegusman]

Had the same thing happen too my super lift arm. But the shaft in the box was also cracked almost all the way through.

 

[dieselponyexpress]

Thanx for the comments guys!

I'll contact skyjacker and will see what happens. Sending them my pitman arm from germany is half the price of a new one though . . .

175lbs/ft is pretty tight for the cross bolt. To be honest, i sure did recheck the bolt once, but not periodically as mentioned within the instruction sheet. Maybe rcamacho is right with his suggestion.

Walter

 

[dieselponyexpress]

Took some pics today, just to let you know.

 

[thatK30guy]

Thats what my arm looked like, too. Have you called Skyjacker yet?

 

[Dafey]

Email those pics to skyjacker MAYBE they wont want it mailed back if you tell them where you are too...