It threaded just fine.

 

Of course the replacement's the same, it came out the same box; indeed, as it's RA, quite possibly one someone else had returned.

Surprised the zirk was up to cutting its own thread in the end, but now it's in, can you actually pump grease into the joint?

 

I'll try the grease and report back. In the meantime, here are the threads the zerk fitting cut when I screwed it fully in.

 

I got out my grease gun and put 4-5 pumps of grease into the zerk before it started coming out the front of the joint as expected. I suppose my concern was much ado about nothing.

BUT, I've run into another issue. No one, and I mean no one, seems to have the MOOG drag link for the V8 ZJ (DS1310) in stock. Rock Auto has ZJ drag links in stock made by either Ultra-Power or Mevotech, but I'm not sure if I like their quality. They do have the regular XJ MOOG drag link (DS1238). As far as I can tell, the only difference between the two drag links is the ZJ one is 0.65 inches longer than the XJ one, which wouldn't be a bad thing with my 2.5" lift. Is there any reason to wait a while until I can find the MOOG ZJ drag link (DS1310) somewhere instead of just going with a new regular XJ one from MOOG? Since the joint at the passenger end isn't replaceable, and it's likely the original drag link, I'd like to replace it while I'm doing everything else. Or are the two drag links different in ways beside their overall length?

 

You can use the XJ draglink.

 

Glad it worked out for you. If you've never seen such a situation, you should question it, and you did. Ride on!

 

Update: I finally got a chance to swap out all the parts yesterday. I ended up painting the drag link, tie rod, and the two tie rod ends, since they all came unpainted. I've got a set of toe plates for my track car, so getting the toe dialed in and the steering wheel centered was pretty easy.