Since the pitman arm is directly attached to the steering gear, it's having to push against all the resistance of the truck itself along with the force generated by the steering gear. Eventually the pitman arm wears down. The more you off road (where you do extreme steering against objects like rocks, etc), the greater the wear against the pitman arm. Hits on the front wheel from objects while travelling will degrade the pitman and idler arms even more.

I've heard that the newer heavy duty Moog produced pitman and idler arms last a while. My 97.5 had the old ones and was upgraded to the new ones about 10000 miles ago, and I don't have a problem with them yet. A search on the HML archives show that the older nylon based ones had been able to last about 15k or so. This means that the current ones should last a bit longer.

To maintain - grease the heck out of it. Both the pitman and idler arms have some grease zerks to them. Grease 'em up.

Supposedly both parts are relatively easy to do if you have the tools. I've heard about 2 hours for each. I don't know the service book time (since my service and parts manuals are still on order from the local dealer.)

Steve Y.