Help my pitman arm wont budge

Post by **Yoda** » Mon Sep 14, 2009 10:09 am

Got a pitman arm puller from autozone. Had that thing cranked to the max without breaking it. Soaked it in pb blaster for two days now. Still won't move. Should I just pull the whole ps pump and take it to a shop to have them press it off? I'm stuck on this one, no pun intended.

Post by **Yoda** » Mon Sep 14, 2009 10:55 am

did a little more searching seems like making a decent sized notch in the arm before putting the puller arm helps. anyone have a dremel or angle grinder? I didn't bring mine to school.

Post by **willhf1011** » Mon Sep 14, 2009 11:17 am

find someone with a torch. heat up the pitman arm, avoiding running too much heat onto the sector shaft. once you get the arm red just crank down on the puller and it will fall off with next to no effort, you could probably even use a hammer. mine almost broke my puller before i used heat.

Post by **Yoda** » Mon Sep 14, 2009 9:44 pm

thanks for the tip. i'll try it tomorrow.

Post by **MtnToys** » Mon Sep 14, 2009 10:44 pm

Give me a call if you're still looking for a grinder.

Post by **Fonger** » Mon Sep 14, 2009 11:03 pm

I'm assuming you have a new pitman arm. If you do then you need to take an angle grinder and cut a slot in the pitman arm parallel to the sector shaft & splines. Cut the slot all the way through the arm just don't mess up the splines. The pitman arm will make a loud popping sound as the surface tension is released and it will slide right off. I've had to do that on every Ford Super Duty that we've lifted here. Dab a little anti-seize on the next one to keep it from happening again and make sure you tighten the hell out of the nut.

If you don't have a new pitman arm I suggest getting a larger puller since torching it seems to always ruin the lower seal on the steering box.

Post by **Stinson** » Mon Sep 14, 2009 11:06 pm

tighten....heat.....smack with BFH..... repeat

Post by **willhf1011** » Mon Sep 14, 2009 11:17 pm

Stinson wrote:tighten....heat.....smack with BFH..... repeat

exactly. i heated mine with the torch and the lower seal on my box is fine, i was just slow, careful, and deliberate with where i focused the heat

Post by **Yoda** » Sat Sep 19, 2009 10:59 am

heat helped for sure!! threw a torch on her with the puller cranked to the max, beat the hell out of it and it slowly came off. ill throws some pics up of the new lift in the rigs section.