Are any of you guys replacing the stock pitman arm with the one in that kit? If so, do you want to sell your old one?

 

Also, you order parts from O'Reillys online and returns are just as easy. Good luck on your parts.

 

Order is in... I figure even if they only last a year, in a year I'll be better able to afford OEM parts. For now this will tighten up my front end and get me on the trails. Finally.

I'll post back when I receive the kit with some pics...

 

I'll *give you my old one, I'd just throw it away otherwise.
Might not be for a few wks yet though. Do you need one sooner?
Mitzi
Hey-you're in Oklahoma, so am I. That'll make it easier, won't it? I'm just south of Guthrie

 

Kit showed up today. The quality looks great and the packing was excellent. It will take me a few weeks to get around to installtion but from the look and feel of the parts I'm really looking forward to it.

This seems to be a really good company to deal with.

 

I'm in. Keep us informed.

 

Thanks for the follow up, much appreciated.

 

I'm planning on installing this stuff tomorrow aftrenoon sometime. Wish me luck.

Btw, how much and what type of grease do you guys put in these ball joints when you put them in?

Until it sqeezes out?

Any other tips?

 

Ok. I finally got around to doing the install yesterday. Initial impressions are that this is the best money I have ever spent on my truck. The difference is incredible. There are a few spots between my Dad's house where I did the install and mine that I always swerved around to avoid because they always pushed the truck all over the road, well on the way home I hit the worst parts of all of them and the truck tracked straight and true through them.

I also had a loose banging sound that I always heard coming over the last road crossing before I got to the house that was gone now too. I honestly didn't realize how bad it had gotten before until I did this.

Installation was time consuming because I had a few other things to do while I was in there, but it wasn't too bad. I worked from about 9:30 to about 7 last night. I not only did all of the kit, but I took the steering knuckles off and filed down the spacer that I should have done when I installed the kit, and I installed some steel brake lines and removed the drop bracket that I had on the stock lines. If I was just doing the kit I think I could have pulled it off in about 5 hours.

As usual, I took a few pics...


Getting started......




Tie rods and idler gone from passenger side...



Passenger side all done including brake line...



Driver side all torn apart... Note the steering knuckle is loose and just laying there too.



Some pics of the NASTY old stuff...




And a few of all of the new parts installed after I was done.








Like I said, any of you contemplating doing this, you need to do it now. It really made a huge difference. The way I see it, all of my old stuff was so bad that all of this was an amazing difference, and even if some of it only lasts a few years I can do it piece by piece then with OEM stuff. There's no way all of it is going to go bad...

 

Oh man - no rust!

And you have a bracket lift.
Those put additional stress on the parts...

 

Yep, welcome to Florida!

Yeah the lift is what basically forced me to replace everything. It all had 205k miles on it and the lift just trashed everything with a quickness. That's the main reason I decided to do all of this myself. I need to know my way around the front end pretty well as I'll probably need to do parts of this again.