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so i am in the jungle with limited tools.
No pullers or anything like that.
I have a pitman arm ball joint problem which nearly killed me and my family yesterday, driving home while overtaking, i had to take evasive action and the ridiculous play in the steering, that ive just been dealing with, nearly had us run head on into a semitrailer.
So i have to do something about it. Last year i just gave up because it was too difficult.
Today i tried again, and the fit of angry, sweat, blood, tears and frustration came back. It is literally impossible to remove the conical tapered ball joint connection to the drag link right?
The car model is not relevant, its a jungle made jeepney, with a steering gearbox and pitman arm and drag link from some sort of Toyota from the 80s.
This is the arm https://ibb.co/f11ZEm
It is a staked in ball joint, meaning the back of it cannot be disassembled by taking out a circlip.
Does anyone have any special tricks for removing this ˟˟˟˟ing thing, under the car with no room to swing a sledgehammer.
Ive tried jacking it sideways with a car jack, banging the absolute ˟˟˟˟ out of it outward in a motion to spilt it apart with a hammer and steel bar, and penetrating oil.
I suspect its seized with rust. But perhaps someone has a tactic, that i havent thought of yet.
and another thing, as this is made out of random parts, does anyone know if any pitman arm will fit any sterring box spindle and any std draglink will fit the conical shaped bit for any pitman arm?
Let me rephrase that, are all pitman arms from toyota fitted with the same profile connection.
First let me say this. If you suspect items are rusted in place and don't have penetrating spray ATF works very well. Just protect as best you can from drips. A catch basin/cat litter/straw over a tarp etc. as to pulling that apart have you tried a pickle fork tool? Use a wedge, pickle fork, and a big hammer to separate the 2 parts. Also diesel fuel is an excellent degreaser for helping clean up parts. Sorry if I'm not much help. Good luck and glad your all ok.
Does Amazon deliver to your particular jungle? Because honestly, the right tool makes most jobs a breeze, the pickle fork might work too, but if I have to choose a tool for this I'd prefer a puller. There are dozens of pitman arm pullers on Amazon, and one made of some decent steel will get that pitman arm off for sure. You have internet where you are because you are posting on here, so it can't be THAT remote, can it? Can you elaborate on where you are exactly? One final thing you could try is heating it with a torch, but with grease and penetrating oil all over the place you might have to be careful of a fire.
I’m not a big fan of the “pickle fork” Separatir but it will work. The idea is best to press it out with a ball joint puller. In a pinch you maybe able to used something else to push the tapered end through. But without being there hard to give better advice. Be cautious with steering and brake systems as problems do not get better. Obviously if you knew it had a problem and are still passing with the family riding you should address them before catastrophic failure.
I’m not a big fan of the “pickle fork” Separatir but it will work. The idea is best to press it out with a ball joint puller. In a pinch you maybe able to used something else to push the tapered end through. But without being there hard to give better advice. Be cautious with steering and brake systems as problems do not get better. Obviously if you knew it had a problem and are still passing with the family riding you should address them before catastrophic failure.
I just figured depending on how remote he was it might be easier to just use/make a pickle fork. Vs trying to find the right size puller.
yeh id love to get my hands on a puller but to do that ill have to go back into the city. thats a 3 hour drive in the worlds worst traffic. litteraly.
hehe i have internet because ive run a 1 km series of network cable and router segments up a very large hill to a 4g router which can just get about 1.5 Mbps.
anyway, back to topic, it IS a ball joint. By definition a ball joint is a.... well. ball joint. i told u its on the pitman arm so that should be enough to stop anyone thinking im talking about suspension. Not a langauge issue, im an aussie :p.
the drag link is welded yes, its cut and welded to size.
today ill get out the can of deoderant and lighter and try blowtorching the area to heat it up, amd find something i can cut up to make a fork thingy.
i left wd40 soaksng in it all night so maybe today ill have better luck
well im not proud of my carrying on today in front of my wifes family and extended family. lots of swearing, throwing of tools, and parts. and no success removing either end of it under the car.
i ended up having to remove the steering wheel and steering column in order to remove the steering box (its so tight the box cant be removed moved at all while connected to the flex coupling)... then somehow managed to weave the box, pitman arm and drag link out as one piece, around exhaust pipes, whilst steering the wheel to move the pitman arm to the required posistions get get it out.
what a work around.
i had to cut the pitman arm off the gearbox spline, damagine the spline a bit. when it was out of the car i tried to remove it with a large gear puller by grunding the puller arms to a smaller shape, but it just kept slippling off, the gear puller is designed to only work with large diameter objects but not little things like this. so i just cut the damn thing with a grinder and opened it with a chisel.
and had to destroy the ball join end with a sledge hammer and got that end loose. found a cheap sller pitman arm in town whose ball join and spline hole matched and im about to try it.
so basicallly it couldnt be done in the vehicle.
guck.
nope.
no luck. now im in even worse a situation. the only pitman arm within 2 hours drive turned out to be too short and bent to the wrong side, and i didnt figure that till i had litterkay bolted every single part back together and was just about to install it. it sits right were the tosser who made the thing, where he routed the exhaust down pipe, which incidenty is the dumbest thing ive seen in my 18 years of automotive experience. u might be able to see it in the original pic.
so now, i have no choice, but to have the cast iron from the old one donated to the middle of the new one which is stinking dangerous for a steering component. not to mwntion, the heat from welding it so close the the ball joint will probably ruin the ball joint so i will go from a loose bal joint do a ball joint which is going to fail soon..
I boughtvthis car because i learned from experience, that it is insanely stupid to spend large sums money on a car in this country. bu5 no matter what u do here, u end up in strife.
ive managed to get myself bannedfrom starting new topics.
so can anyone in this thread help identify which pitman arm i have.
thanks to the moderators by the way.
Need more specs on your rig. You guys outside of the US have access to yotas we only can dream about. I saw a 97 diesel with solid axle on Czech Republic. I just drooled.We haven't had a factory solid axle since '85 and no diesels. Is steering a push pull?
yeh its a push pull from a vertical pitman arm, horizontal fwd backwd drag link, bellcrank mounted on driveshaft, and both tierods connected to that. all the hubs re ki gping/knuckle type, with i think are off an ol WW2 jeep tgat was left here after the war.
i have no specs because its not a car. haha.
its like a full size gocart made out of random parts. TBH im not even certain the steering components in question are even toyota :/.
was just hoping somone on here might recognise them if they are, seeings as this is yotatech.COM, not. com.us
Last edited by Thommo Thompson; 12-23-2017 at 02:55 PM.
12-22-2017, 01:06 AM
