Pitman arm inspection and potential risk

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GPW43
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Pitman arm inspection and potential risk

Post by GPW43 » Sat Jul 29, 2017 10:12 pm

Hmmwv are built tough but routine inspection are necessary for safety. Last week a friend and I inspected the truck's front-end and saw that the Pitman arm was in a bad shape and ready to fail. it must have happened over the years but it was not noticed until now. It was changed promptly and as you can see it had pulled itself out of the body by about 1"; Inspect your trucks regularly. i was lucky and the truck drives really nice now. The distance between the red lines is the amount it pulled out.

Symptoms: Noise on the front-end - on occasions
Truck would pull left/right when driven on uneven ground- nothing substantial but it was there and one could notice it..

Z
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Last edited by GPW43 on Sun Aug 06, 2017 5:58 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Pitman arm inspection and potential risk

Post by Action » Sun Jul 30, 2017 4:51 am

Things like this are why I am amazed that some guys buy a HMMWV from GP and then drives long distances to get home. Most would have no idea what they are looking at in a pretrip inspection.

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Re: Pitman arm inspection and potential risk

Post by JuanPrado » Mon Jul 31, 2017 2:48 pm

That much slop will also make other front end components wear prematurely faster. Check Idler arms and all tie rods & ball joints.

DId that joint have grease? Seems very unlikely that joint was kept lubed properly.

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Kurt Lesser
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Re: Pitman arm inspection and potential risk

Post by Kurt Lesser » Tue Aug 01, 2017 7:18 am

Unfortunately the grease zerk is on the side between the pitman arm and the frame making it hard to see and hard to get at with the grease gun. The steering needs to be run to the limits to be able to access it easily.
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GPW43
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Re: Pitman arm inspection and potential risk

Post by GPW43 » Sun Aug 06, 2017 6:04 pm

My take is the rubber cover was lost some time ago and this truck was in water on / off and yes, I FAILED to grease it as I failed to see the fitting. I inspected the idler arm and it is ok, just the pitman. At today' s ride, unrelated incident a friend complained his truck was pulled here and there. It had started recently. Inspected the truck and found the lower rear ball joint to have four lose bolts; visibly lose as the bolts were slight canted, all four.

We tightened them up and owner is going to get a new sets of bolts for all corners - he will use loctite in addition to lock-nuts.

Z
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