Rowski - <font color=blue>How often do you grease your EF-500, specifically the loader and backhoe? Would you say that you grease less by using synthetic grease?</font color=blue>
I use synthetic grease for three reasons: 1) They drastically reduce wear. 2) They aren't adversely affected by cold and heat nearly as much, which contributes to reason #1. 3) They resist "washout" a lot better, which also contributes to #1. I don't think synthetic grease, in and of itself, does too much to increase the time between greasing intervals. However, I wouldn't use #2 petroleum grease in anything but the hottest weather, but I can use synthetic #2 year round because of factor #2 above. I do believe that you can extend the interval between greasings with #2 vs. #1. So, from that standpoint, synthetic helps. The EF-500 manual says to grease everything "daily". (I assume they mean only when you're using it.) I don't grease it daily, even when I'm using it all day. I grease it every 25 hours. If I didn't use the backhoe at all (or hardly at all) during that 25 hours, it gets skipped. I used to grease the Kubotas every 25 hours, too, even though they recommended 10. I never had anything show any wear at all on any of the Kubotas.
I remember your asking about cordless grease guns a while back. At the time I wasn't interested. I thought about answering your message anyway, but decided that would be one of the few times I would refrain from talking about something I didn't know anything about. /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif