Tapered Drag Link Insert Concerns

I'm in the middle of my WJ swap and am using Ruff Stuff's 1 ton steering kit. The kit provides two high angle TREs for the drag link. To fit them in the knuckle and pitman arm, you can either get the tapered reamer and team the holes out or drill the holes out to 1" and weld in a tapered insert (Ruff Stuff). I decided to use the inserts, as the reamer is pretty expensive, and now I'm past the point of no return, but I'm not exactly thrilled with the way this looks.


There's less than 3/8" of meat left on the bone. Would you guys run this? Anyone heard of a pitman arm failing after a similar modification? I'm leaning toward running it for the time being but replacing it ASAP. My options appear to include getting another stock pitman and using the reamer or getting a different pitman with more meat on it. Is there an aftermarket pitman available with more meat? When you swap in a Durango box, do you use the Durango pitman, and does it have more meat?
I'd also suggest to others looking at doing this to wait until they've made another batch of the inserts. The ones they have now don't fit properly and they're modifying them in house. I haven't received a replacement set yet, but I'll be interested to see how they shorten the insert and keep the same dims on the taper...

I would not run that pitman arm.

I'm not a fan of welding inserts into pitman arms.

Having seen a few broken pitman arms on trails, it's something you should try to avoid.

Where are you located? Maybe someone in your area has the reamer. Or any machine shop should be able to do it.

pitman arms are cheap, like 20$ new from all over , I get WJ pitman arms for 20$ from summit. I wouldnt feel too great about running that unless it was trial only rig.
Consider getting a new pitman arm and having a shop with a reamer , ream it. Even if you have to ship it. Otherwise buy a used reamer on ebay then resell it on ebay when you are done. but before you sell it, ream 2 spare pitman arms, one for the garage, one for the trail.

You can order a pirman arm with the correct taper from places like WFO Conceprs or Parts Mike if you don't want to ream them yourself.