Drag link & tie rod cups and seats assembly

[Mister Moose]

I saw something on this somewhere and now of course can't find it.

Of the 4 sets in a new kit, 3 are the same and one is different. 3 are top hat shaped, the odd one is thinner and more bowl shaped.

Where does the bowl shaped one go, and for the bonus, why did they do it this way???

Also, one plug is flat, the rest are recessed.

[alexiskai]

The odd-one-out is the one that goes around the pitman arm, I believe. It's a different shape because the sequence of the components is different. See more here.

[Mister Moose]

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^ Thanks, that's just where I had seen it, and couldn't remember.

As an added note:

I've noticed on my car the grease seal and metal seal holder on the ball winds up closer to the zirc grease fitting at the pitman end of the drag link. They touch. I've looked at other cars and there's a good 1/4" gap there. How could this happen? Seems like the inside casting where the ball cup rests on my car is deeper, but how could that be? (The car is a '30, built in early Dec '29)

Also, when assembling the pitman end, I couldn't get the end plug to thread. It looked like the ball wasn't getting fully seated, but no amount of pushing or rapping with a rubber mallet was getting anywhere. I then noticed that while the length of the new spring was the same as the old, the face of the new spring was not perpendicular to the sides, so when it was inserted into the drag link both high spots on each end of the non square spring made the effective length longer. The new spring was actually a bit of a parallelogram, not a rectangle. This was from a teflon seat & spring kit. Some time at the bench grinder fixed this, but I am coming to the conclusion that:

It is easy to work on a Model A ... if you have a machine shop to make the parts fit easily.