My last thread ended with essentially crossing the steering box off the list of perps for the steering dead-zone. I finally got the car up on the QuickJacks and quickly found that the ball joint on the center tie rod at the pitman arm has too much play. The flex disc on the spindle does not have any play. Luckily I bought a new center link from Mesa Performance. I wasn't able to split the ball joints using a fair amount of banging, so I ordered a splitter set and some pickle forks from Amazon.
In the meantime - there is a "protection cap" that is NLA (number 3 below) for the idler arm. I can't find information on this - does anyone know what it is? On the pitman side there is a washer under a dust cap, but there is only a protection cap on the idler side.
The new center tie rod has dust boots that appear to replace the protection cap and the rubber bushing that was underneath the cap. Am I OK if I just install the new tie rod as-is, or do I need to source other parts? The protection cap appears to just function as a dust boot.
The joint at the pitman was totally spent, so I'm looking forward to the improvement in steering.
