Hey gents,

So a bolt broke off in my steering gear, better upgrade now, right? Anyways. My steering gear is separated from my frame now. What's the best way to take my pitman arm off now that I don't have the leverage anymore?

 

Large table vice or some other way to clamp the box securely. If you can weld you could try welding the box to a piece of steel if you don't have a large/strong enough vice.

Other than that, take it to a shop and pay them for an hour of labor to get the arm off. I had to do that with a pitman arm that was very stuck once.

 

What size is the pitman arm nut? I have basically no way to pull it off I think.

 

Why can't you use a pitman arm puller?

 

its worth a try to get it done at home

Put the steering box in a vice, and use a pitman arm puller to remove it.

Tension the pitman arm until it is getting "dangerously tight", then smack the pitman arm sleeve and steering gear with a hammer to make it "snap" and release tension. PB Blaster it for as long as you can in advance. Heat will definitely help, but only if you can get the area hot as **** (meaning a heat-gun probably won't cut it, but one of those standard propane/MAP torches will).

Mine is literally rust-welded on there - I had a shop try to pull the pitman arm off after I broke my puller, so i could coat it in antisieze and do the steering box swap at home. They ended braking one of their MAC pitman arm pullers even after using a torch to heat the crap out of everything.

I am going to end up just buying a junkyard or ebay/new pitman arm since I don't want to deal with the hassle. You can use a ZJ pitman arm for an extra .5" of drop if you need it.

 

I couldn't do it at home because I snapped bolts off in the gearbox and don't have a way to clamp it down or anything. Ended up bringing both gearboxes to a mechanic nearby and he swapped it for free. I'll give him a little extra when I bring my jeep over there for the alignment. Also got my jcr front end tie ins installed, w/ Durango box and jcr steering spacer. Best part is that I don't even have a new bumper to tie in yet haha.

 

Finished getting it all installed. All new tres, including zj tie rod upgrade, new (remanned) Durango box, and Jcr frame tie in w/ steering spacer. Steers amazing right now. Before I could wobble the steering wheel back and forth a good 3 inches or so going down the freeway and the jeep would continue straight ahead on its course, now going down neighborhood streets the steering is nice and tight, better than my wj. (Maybe it needs some new parts too? Haha) just need an alignment and I'm waiting on sway bar links to install my new sway bar bushings.