Ball joint in pitman arm???

Disclaimer: Links on this page pointing to Amazon, eBay and other sites may include affiliate code. If you click them and make a purchase, we may earn a small commission.

Yeret

The Village Drunk
Joined
Oct 2, 2014
Posts
938
Reaction score
178
Location
Under the hood fixing/breaking something.
Ram Year
1999
Engine
5.9 Magnum
Hey, all. Got a week's vacation coming up and I've got three vehicles to sort out during this time. Boy, I sure hope the weather's nice...

Anyway, the Ram needs some steering work and I'm thinking that I'm going to have to replace the gearbox sooner rather than later. I was underneath the truck yesterday checking stuff out and I noticed that the pitman arm appeared to have a ball joint where the arm connects to the drag link. Looking around, it seems that only the 2wd trucks have a ball joint here, whereas the 4wd trucks do not. Looking through the service manual that I downloaded from here (many thanks to whoever it was that uploaded it here, it has helped a lot), I can't see any reference to a ball joint here.

My question is are the 4wd pitman arms supposed to have a ball joint or not? If not, would it be advisable or not to swap the arm?
 

dapepper9

Senior Member
Joined
Feb 7, 2013
Posts
5,908
Reaction score
2,224
Location
Iowa/Nebraska Border
Ram Year
2001
Engine
5.9L V8
Whole link. But it's only about 8-12" long. It's just like the driverside tie rod end though it is a different part number
 

Okiespaniel

Senior Member
Joined
Dec 18, 2011
Posts
1,645
Reaction score
897
Location
Work, Shop, Computer
Ram Year
2000
Engine
magnum, 5.9
https://www.napaonline.com/en/search?q=N=5002000+5002200+200220090+10199900+50200500+50299900&Nty=1&Ntk=Keyword&Ntt=Pitman+arm&text=Pitman+arm&isApplication=true&indices=API&referer=nol-veh-conds

Is this what you have? ^^

The pitman arm on my 4wd truck has no ball joint. There's a tie rod end that connects to it. That tire rod has an adjustment sleeve and then the drag link.

On a 2wd truck the pitman arm ball joint connects to center link. On the passenger side frame there should be an idler arm that parallels the pitman arm. Tie rods connect to the outer holes on each side of the center link.

There's a rare odd duck in the pile. Certain HD 2wd drive trucks used a dummy tube axle and ran a T steering setup. This occurred halfway through 1998 and into 1999. These would only be on HD2500 and 3500 trucks.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: Mop
Top