1st Greasing

Boner · Aug 12, 2001

Under the hood on my ZD21 there is a periodic maint schedule. Under "daily" there are some grease points they say to grease. Spindle shafts on mower, mower u-joints, front casters, etc. Now it says to do this "daily." Since this is a commercial unit, I take "daily" to mean about every 8 hours or so. When I got the unit from the dealer, there was blue grease around most of the zerks, so surely they greased everything before delivery. My unit now has 10hrs, so I start on one of the mower spindles. I pump, pump, pump, then pump some more. Then pump, pump, stop to check my grease gun, (yep it's working) pump, pump, then I start to see some water coming out of the spindle, pump, pump, more water... finally after doing this for what seemed like eternity, I see grease coming out of the spindle. I think I must have put 1/4 tube of grease in this thing. The other spindles took an equal amount of grease. The body joints, on the other hand, seemed ok.
I don't even need to ask if this is normal, or not. My question is, is it worth contacting my dealer about? I'm sure I will get a typical "If it aint broke, we cant fix it" type response.
So say the meter has 10 hours. Subtract for warm up, cool down, scooting across the yard, giving the kid rides, etc. Say the mower has about 5-7 hours on it. Should I consider the mower spindle shafts to be damaged?

Thanks
-Ben

r0GuE · Aug 12, 2001

Sounds like the same type of maniacle attention to detail I recieved with my unit.
What kind of grease did you use? Are you sure it is compatable with the grease you had in it? (base type)

Rogue

Boner · Aug 12, 2001

Dealer said SAE multi-purpose. That's what I went with. Thought about synthetic, but wasnt sure. Whatever I used, it's bound to work better than water.

Ben

TresCrows · Aug 13, 2001

Pull it apart and look for yourself--you will see a cup on the bottom of the spindle that becomes gooed up in time with grease and gook. It is possible for water to sit in here and also likey that is where all the grease you pumped in went. You do not have a problem. When you sharpen the blades clean this cup out and refit it. I really doubt there is any damage becasue I imagine it was greased by the dealer--you saw the zerks greased-- and now it was time to grease it some more--from the sound of it you now have plenty of grease in it which will now sling out all over everything. J

Anonymous Poster · Aug 13, 2001

It will interesting to see what he finds. Typical "servicing technique" says hit with one or two shots of grease, at the max. This of course wouldn't apply to a new unit if there is a grease reservoir somewhere that needs to be filled. Regardless of the one or two shot rule I always try to grease my pivot points slowly (on backhoe/loader)until I can just see that it is ejecting, but not so much as to leave a dirt attracting mess. Not to mention my having to wipe much excess away.

This whole business of setup and "precheck" is something that you shouldn't (sadly) always rely on. It's a great time to check all the maintenance points anyway, tractor is new, clean, manual is new clean, hands are new, clean /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif.

Biggest goof I've seen is on tire pressure, most manufacturers I guess don't want the tires to go flat, my Jeep Wrangler came with at least 20lbs TOO MUCH air in tires, that's 20+pounds over the maximum on tire for maximum load. The BX was about right, the L35 was overfilled as well.

When I drained my Chev Tahoe the first time I actually measured it (**** again) it had 6.5 quarts in it, a titch over the 5 1/4 it is supposed to take, or does take to get it "just right". So much for the overfilling no no... Either it's got lots of room to slosh the oil around or maybe the lack of blowby on a new engine allowed it to run without blowing the crank seals out.

Some of the backhoe bolts on my L35 were fingertight.

del