Well after waiting on hold for 35 minutes with CPP only to be hung up on twice while waiting in the queue I finally managed to get someone on the phone! He is requesting from his supervisor that they exchange them for me. He said I will likely have to pay shipping both ways but I think that would be mostly fair given that I placed the order on March 1 and I am just now 9 months later finding the issue. Hopefully his boss will approve it and I can move on from this debacle!
In more exciting news I was able to swap the non drop spindles that I have on with without issue and do a loose fit of all the steering components and it appears everything works so thats a win for me. I have managed to misplace the pitman arm nut on the steering box side but I know it's around somewhere so I'm not going to waste to much time digging for it yet.
Here you can see the lower ball joint issue. And this is only spinning the nut on by hand without any tools.
I rolled it outside on its own wheels for the first time in over 10 years which for me was a big accomplishment. I also found that the jeep roller wheels that I picked up for free won't fit due to the hub bore up front so I resorted to using the new wheels that I have for it. I had the wife toss the jeep wheels on Facespace this morning for free since I got them free and someone is picking those up tonight to get them outta my way.
Also if you have a keen eye you will notice that I am missing the concave washers on the upper control arm on one side that I have also misplaced so I used a couple extra shims for now until those turn up just to keep me moving forward.
Since I had it outside I figured it would be a good time to power wash it and get as much crap off before I go to town with a wire wheels to help eliminate some mess.
After that I just turned it around to put the front in under the cab so I can work on the rear and start getting the air tank and compressors mounted.