A friend of mine has an '02 that is stock and has low miles/no abuse and his steering box went on him too, so I'm guessing that it is fairly common, although you may want to look in the 2nd gen section for more info.
its called a sector shaft support bracket by defiant you can see it on there website there is a dealer just outside of calgary that sells them hrt offroad ask for kevin he will give you a good price 888-898-8789,i've done my home work on these and this one is the beefest one out there the rest are to flimsy as for theres alot of stress on these when steering but mine works awsome,,it only took me a half hour to install aswell hope this helps:thumbsupI'm new to the forum but I have had this happen to me when I owned my 1500 I to replaced the steering box but I also bought a bracket for it aswell. The bracket is bolt on and it supports the shaft from blowing out in the steering box. Worked like a damn, would recommend. The pin threads on in place of the pitman arm nut, the pin then fits in the bearing on the bracket, and the bracket bolts to the frame using the sway bar holes (bracket goes between the frame and sway bar). This fixed it 100%. I have pictures of the bracket they are to big to attach but I can e-mail them.