Blew a steer tire yesterday morning on way to doctors appointment...I had two good tires in the back of the truck I had just had mounted the day before. Trucks way out of alignment from damage to lower control arm. It's twisted like my mind..lol.. I've been just throwing my old tires on the front end ever few weeks or month as they tore up.. cause I haven't really had it in me to do all the work on the truck and don't have the cash to pay to have it done .. ideler arm was shot pitman arm was shot , bearings on passenger side are shot cause last person that did them left the hub nut to loose . So anyway to add insult to injury and because God has a great sense of humor, as I pulled of the side the road thinking "no biggie I can change tire in five minutes and still get to Dr.....". I get to the back of the truck and realize my Jake is at home...I'd taken it out of the truck cause I needed to haul a load of debris to The land fill the day before.
....so I limped it to a shop about a mile away thankful I was in town not on highway...20 bucks later the 2tires that were in back of the truck were on the front end... Not making it to doc soooo....
Came home stewed about it for a few minutes.....nope I'm tired of this shit...time to put all these parts in and get it aligned while I can....
Ideler and the arm came out pretty easy...(after fishing the bolts out of the frame with magnetic stick I had the new one in , in under a hour...then the fun started..
Who ever the hell designed these trucks is a sadist.... because right dead center of the cross member is that plate that sticks out about 6 .inch's...the center tie rod goes right over it... So after taking the castle nut off and taking the big nut off that holds the pitman arm on the gear box used the puller to get it loose from the gear box then realized something..no matter how I turned it I couldn't get it actually of the shaft and our of the hole in center tie rod at same time..after fighting with it for 40 minutes I finally thought well you dumb shit just unbolt the damn gear box and lift it up off the pitman....
ok it's off ...pitman arm is changed. ....I feel stupid..... all is right with the world...nope...new pitman slid on the spline shaft of gearbox abou maybe half way got washer and nut on and started tightening the nut...I couldn't get the arm to go as far up the shaft as the old one was no matter how hard I wrenched on it...the arm is "on" and the nut is tight but it's not right...so today I get to try to figure this out...shaft and arm are bothe 4spline so it matches up...can't believe it's supposed to be like that....
The other project for today is to change the lower control arm and sway bar link..and change the bearing on the passenger side....this should be fun.... thankful it's 2wheel drive so shouldn't be too too bad.
