weird pitman arm?

[General23cmp]

I asked this question in another thread, but it may get buried as it was random to the subject. I have a question about the pitman arm on my 1969 satellite.

So, I noticed my pitman arm's splines look different than the ones I see online on the replacement ones. The ones I see online either have no indexing (all the teeth look the same all around) or they have the four blind splines at 0, 90, 180, and 270 degrees that go the whole length. My pitman arm almost has half of a blind spline at those degrees. From the top of it where it would first engage the steering box, all the splines look the same (I can slip the pitman on the steering box using any "tooth"/angle), but about halfway down as you would tighten it, four of them turn into blind splines. So they look like they are "half blind" when you look inside the hole. Is this a common configuration or is something wrong? Has anyone seen this before? If it didn't mean disassembly, I would provide photos. I may do that eventually anyway if I have stumped everyone. I could have the wrong thing on my car.

 

[dadsbee]

There's only one double width spline on the box shaft itself. On the manual box that "key" just about lines up with the casting line of the box, just slightly to the forward side of same when the box travel is center. So the "indexing spline" on the arm is the one that is about 90* clockwise from the arms center line when looking down on it from the firewall side. That said I've never seen an arm with multiple indexing keys!

 

[General23cmp]

We must be talking about different things if you’ve never seen a pitman with multiple keys. I see several with 4 keys when I google search “mopar pitman”.

I did go out and take photos of mine. My steering box does have 4 key slots at 0, 90, 180, and 270. My pitman also has four unique teeth for alignment. They aren’t solid keys, but almost like half of a key each as I described above. I have attached pictures to show how mine looks, but’s it was hard getting a good angle and you cannot really see them. Trust me ;)

Regardless, I believe my pitman is aligned properly, it just looked different. Thanks.

 

[dadsbee]

Sorry.. mis-spoke, I found that picture of the spline lined up to the casting line and my brain said only one and why I must have marked it's location. My arms indeed had four master keys, but FULL length for correct locating.

 

[General23cmp]

Thanks. You see my pitman photo? That is a weird locating spline huh? It’s half solid and half small spline.