Grease Gun

Leef · May 30, 2001

I have finally been able to do some mowing as the rain has let up for all of 2 days. Afterward, I tried to grease the mower with a new grease gun. This gun seems not to be making a tight fit on the zerk fittings because the grease just oozes around the sides and out onto the fitting not into the fitting. The end has threads, but it seems completely finger tight; all I could do was loosen the end piece which didn't help.

I could make it work with my wife's help: I would hold the fitting tightly while she pushed the handle. This got old so I eventually pulled out a little 5$ one hand grease gun and finished the job ( and completely emptied the little gun canister).

Is there some adjusting I can do to the big new gun or should I just return it?

Also, using the small gun working properly, I couldn't tell when the mower spindles were "full" of grease. I just kept pumping and guessing that it was enough. All of the other fittings will ooze out after a couple pumps, Why doesn't that happen on the mower spindles? Is it oozing out of the bottom where I couldn't see it?

I plan to keep this tractor a long time and want to maintain it right.

Thanks in advance,

Leef

RobS · May 30, 2001

Leef, I had similar experiences with my greasing. I found if the grease gun wasn't lined up pretty well with the zerk, it would blow out the side. I ended up putting a flex hose on my grease gun and it's been fine since.

Some of my zerks seemed to take a lot of grease as well. I can only guess that there is a large cavity within some of them, and just clearance in others. I was eventually able to get grease to ooze out of them all.

BTW, a pnuematic grease gun is a good thing /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

WVBill · May 30, 2001

I've had similar experiences with greasing too. I replaced some of the zirk fittings when they wouldn't take grease and that seemed to solve the problem.

I also have some that seem to take all the grease I pump in. I've wondered where it's going and stopped pumping.

Can any damage be done by pumping too much grease in? Does a pneumatic grease gun pump with more force? Can you "do damage" with a pneumatic?

RobS · May 30, 2001

Bill, the pneumatic does pump with more force, though it's still in small bursts just like a hand gun. Each pull of the trigger dispenses a small amount of grease, it's not continuous. That makes it easy to regulate the quantity.

The only joints that could be damaged are those with a rubber boot, like ball joints. I usually pump 'til the boot swells a bit, then stop. If the boots are "fresh" they'll usually pop off before cracking, but older ones may crack /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

HR_Mutt · May 30, 2001

Leef
I use a non-flexible (short steel tube) on my full size gun. It allows holding the gun tightly with one hand and pumping with the other. Are you wiping the fittings off with a rag before you try to lube? The "gunk" on the fitting could be affecting the lock-up of the zerk to the gun. As far as the spindles, they get 2 pumps only on places where you cannot see or hear it exit.Over lubrication followed by lack of are major sources of bearing failure.
regards
Mutt

Bird · May 30, 2001

WVBill, I agree with Rob. I still remember when I was a teenager working in my dad's service station, we occasionally got a customer who wanted his car greased with the manual grease gun because he was afraid we'd blow out the rubber boots on the tie rod ends with the pneumatic gun (which of course was silly since you could burst them with the manual gun or do it right and not break them with the pneumatic one). And there are some grease fittings that take massive amounts of grease to fill the cavity; one example being the axles on the wheels on some mowers. And if you don't fill that cavity, chances are you'll wear something out. There are undoubtedly some things that have grease seals which could be damaged by too much grease, but I believe that would be pretty rare. Just offhand, I can't think of anything on my tractor or implements that can be damaged by too much grease.

Bird

HR_Mutt · May 31, 2001

Fellow grease gun drivers/w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif
If interested, do a Yahoo search with 3 words...Bearings Lubrication Failure. Of the 4740 hits on the subject by just scrolling thru the site intro you will see numerous mentions of under/over lubrication. Wish I knew how to add those trick hyperlinks in here/w3tcompact/icons/wink.gif. While a tractor/attachment is not a precision machine tool, the basic care of bearings still applies. One other thing to consider, all that grease(over lube) provides a place for contamination to accumulate and end up in the bearing itself.
regards
Mutt

skent · May 31, 2001

While it doesn't apply to tractors, it was a failure due to over-greasing. My neighbor (dairy farmer) asked me to look at his barn cleaner (motor powered conveyer to clean out manure). Motor wouldn't go into reverse. Checked it out and found the forward/reverse switch on the wall was blown. Replaced the switch and when we tried to run in reverse, the motor drew over 60 Amps (it was a 5HP 230V) and would act like it was stuck on the start winding. Charlie insisted the motor was OK and was just rebuilt last month and I must have messed up the wiring on the forward/reverse switch (8 wires). I double checked and found all OK. Pulled the motor end cover and found grease. . . . lots of grease. Seems he had to have the motor rebuilt (last month) for a bearing failure and the motor shop said to apply 1 shot of grease every 1000 hours of operation. Charlie figured to be on the safe side, he'd put a shot in every day or two. Grease had oozed out and into the reverse centrifical switch and shorted out. Interesting side note, I could't understand why the fuse/circuit breaker for the circuit wasn't tripping, the disconnect switch was not fused and the line to the disconnect was tapped right off the barn feed, fused at 100 amps! Needless to say, we made some changes. . . . .

Steve

huckflynn · May 31, 2001

I took your advice and ran that search. The following article gave me some good, general information about lubrication and bearings: http://www.precisionspindle.com/lubricat.htm

Huck

Leef · Jun 4, 2001

Well I ended up going back to Farm and Home store to ask my question and use the grease gun on their tractor. The grease just squirted out the side, so the mgr changed the tip and now it grabs the zerk and I can use 2 hands to pump the grease. I still don't know where all the grease goes on the mower spindles though.

Leef