Bottom one is Auto Zone. Top one is mine.
...what about the other side?
That's why he made the idler arm first.Why did you start with the ilder vs pitman arm?
NO! Do NOT put a ball joint in there! The rigidity will only be as good as the sum of both arms and if only one arm is a fixed object, then that arm will take all the stress! This will defeat the purpose of going with HD arms! I can tell you that if the Pitman has a movable ball joint, I will never be interested in them! I do hope you can produce these for the rest of us. Please do also consider design and fitment of at least the Cognito support kitIdler arms don't have ball joints. They have a plastic bushing inside that the pin rotates on. Here's what the guts of a stock idler arm look like.
Mine replaces that cheap plastic piece with a pair of ball bearings capable of supporting 3700lbs of dynamic load each. When the ball bearings wear out, you replace them with 2 new ones (20/ea), available from any bearing supplier in the world. I picked mine up from McMaster-Carr.
Once we revise a few last minute changes to this prototype and get things on the move, I'm going to start in on a end user rebuildable pitman arm. The pitman arm will have a ball joint. Without a ball joint in at least one side, you will have parts breakage due to chassis flex.
Not sure what stud that the OEM guys use. I'm using at minimum a 4140H chromoly.DWB, your arm looks great, but what is to keep the stud from snapping just like the OE and Moog's? I'm really not knocking what you have, but after a stud snapping on me, I'm still worried even with that great looking arm you have.