Pitman arm - is this OK?

Drop pitman arm installed, but not tight to the steering box. I thought the old one was tight to the steering box. Is this okay? It was done at an ex-Jeep dealer, and I know the guy who worked on it is a 32 year Jeep tech. It drives fine, but I didn't know if it was supposed to be farther up the splines on the output shaft.

It's a tapered shaft so I could see there being some difference between different arms but not much. Mine has some kind of dust boot or cover between the bottom of the box and the top of the arm that appears to be missing on yours. My guess is that it was damaged during removal of the old arm and not replaced. I bet that's why you're noticing the gap (it was covered up before).

x2 ^

I rebuild tons of steering boxes. There are tons of differences between boxes during the different years and even within the same year. The earlier boxes have two seals on the pitman shaft and no rubber dirt guard on the shaft. The later have a single seal and the dirt guard.

Like the man said, the pitman arm does not go all the way up to the body of the steering box.

That's perfectly fine as long as the nut tightens down properly.

Thanks guys for the responses