Grease - is there no better way? Can we talk about this?

[HamishMacCheap]

I think Kubota recommends the FEL on my LX2610 be greased every 10 hours. I follow their recommendations.

 

[jrsavoie]

I think Kubota recommends the FEL on my LX2610 be greased every 10 hours. I follow their recommendations.

How do you like that machine?

I hate my wife's

 

[LHF2019]

That's all well and good until you rent a skid steer and the track pops off. Try refilling the grease on that with a manual grease gun. Your hands/forearms will hate you.

Different equipment different needs. A one off nobody can plan for. If I was in construction it would be a different story.

I used to think about getting new grease in my 5 gallon grease bucket that refilled hand grease guns. Wish I had done it years ago.
Easier and faster than changing a tube of grease. Best used with a grease gun that the rod comes out as the grease gun is filled
Never have an air problem.

Does anybody have a recommendation for a good quality pistol grip grease gun?

Mine are old and failing
I had 4. One for each shed. I'm down to one. And it's leaking past the plunger. I'm wishing I had looked into fixing the others.

The guns I have bought since, suck
A lot of squeezing and not much grease pumping.

Sad to say, my wife had done all of the greasing this year.

Lock and lube yellow gun.

I like to grease my skid steer and excavator bucket pins every 1/2 tank of fuel and the rest of the pins every tank of fuel. I’m not sure what you’re greasing every 100 hours.

How does that equate to hours? My skidsteer I do them every 10 hours. Over kill but if I forget or get busy I'm still good and do them at next 10 hour. Newer tractors are 50 hour fittings, older Tractors are 10 hour. I do them at 25 hour. All are done per hour meter on equipment. Still overkill because obviously there is running but no movement.

 

[mikester]

+

 

[dodge man]

JD says every 10 hours for the FEL. I always remember a contractor, who I assume their maintenance people got tired of fixing stuff, had stickers all over the equipment that said “I NEED GREASE TO LIVE”.

 

[jyoutz]

I always wondered if the recommendation is for 10 engine operating hours or 10 hours using the loader.

 

[HamishMacCheap]

jrsavoie -

It is actually a LX2610SU which means it does not have the mid-mount PTO. There may be other differences between it and a Kubota LX2610 that I am not aware of but I bought mine because it doesn't have the mid-mount PTO, something I would never have any need to use. I bought it because I needed a FEL with a 3rd function grapple.

I find it to be quite easy to transport, fuel efficient and being a Kubota, reliable. That said, I now only use it to take advantage of the grapple and a 4' rotary cutter on pine plantation roads and food plots. I used the tractor and the rotary cutter a couple of times to maintain the field around the residence but no longer do so because it took too long and more importantly, it was a very uncomfortable ride. A very uncomfortable ride. I guess it is a result of small, R4 tires and light weight.

It's paid for and it's mine so I will keep it but I use a L3302 with a 5' rotary cutter to maintain the field around the house.

 

[rScotty]

You're right! But at the same time, 24 zerks on a zero turn seems kinda ridiculous. Didn't anyone tell Kubota the rest of the world switched over to sealed bearings for most applications, 40 years ago?

Even the idlers on my 2007 Deere mower deck are all sealed bearings, the only greasible things there are the three main spindles. Everything else that gets greased on that machine is a non-bearing pivot, such as mower deck trailing arms and brake linkage.

Most sealed bearings have a service life that's many times longer than the lifespan of a commercial zero turn mower, so they're an ideal application case.

Sealed bearings ought to last longer, but I cannot help noticing that in the last 50 years or so I've replaced a lot more ruined sealed bearings than I have greaseable ones.

So I'd say that sealed bearings are OK in the short run, but for durability over decades I'd rather have greasable bearings.

rScotty

 

[CH4Ohio]

Here is a used grease gun I found online. Only $200. Looks like it's had a pretty easy life and been well taken care of . . .

I've observed that grease is messy and greasy. I just keep plain old cheap paper towels next to the grease gun and use as needed. Buy yourself a can of those GOJO or Fast Orange hand-wipes to help final cleanup -- they're worth every penny.

PS -- Decided not to buy the grease gun . . .

 

[LHF2019]

I always wondered if the recommendation is for 10 engine operating hours or 10 hours using the loader.

10 operating would be my assumption. I grease loader as I feel it needs done. Just like all my implements I guesstimate the hours it’s run. If handling round or square bales. Loader gets done every day otherwise whenever I feel it needs it

 

[ultrarunner]

Here is a used grease gun I found online. Only $200. Looks like it's had a pretty easy life and been well taken care of . . .

View attachment 3829914



I've observed that grease is messy and greasy. I just keep plain old cheap paper towels next to the grease gun and use as needed. Buy yourself a can of those GOJO or Fast Orange hand-wipes to help final cleanup -- they're worth every penny.

PS -- Decided not to buy the grease gun . . .

We always used Boraxo Heavy Duty at the machine shop but learned Borax can cause health issues?

I wonder how all the folks in Trona CA faired living ground zero for Borax?

 

[WinterDeere]

Sealed bearings ought to last longer, but I cannot help noticing that in the last 50 years or so I've replaced a lot more ruined sealed bearings than I have greaseable ones.

I agree, on tractors, but much less so on mowers. Zero turn mowers are 2500 hour or 20 year machines, and most sealed bearings are rated way beyond those numbers.

Tractors obviously last a lot longer, I've owned several over 30 years, and one over 60 years. My old 60 year machine is out there still running in someone else's collection, today. But even so, I'd bet the manufactuers have a 20'ish year "design lifetime" in mind when selecting components.

 

[Fixastuff]

An electric grease gun doesn't have a huge benefit for most homeowner size machines. But get a BIG machine like an industrial backhoe or giant farm tractor with huge attachments that have a lot of fittings and you'll get to appreciate one pretty quick if you grease it regularly. Not everybody works with small stuff.

Or when it’s 0 degrees out side.

 

[4570Man]

Here is a used grease gun I found online. Only $200. Looks like it's had a pretty easy life and been well taken care of . . .

View attachment 3829914



I've observed that grease is messy and greasy. I just keep plain old cheap paper towels next to the grease gun and use as needed. Buy yourself a can of those GOJO or Fast Orange hand-wipes to help final cleanup -- they're worth every penny.

PS -- Decided not to buy the grease gun . . .

It retails for $169 bare tool or $230 with a battery and charger.

 

[OldPaint]

Recommended service schedule for pedal and brake linkage on tractor and zero turn is 100 hours or annual. Tractor trunion and mower spindles are spec'd for 50 hours or twice annual. FEL pins are also spec'd at 50 hours, which is about 2x per year for me.

Ummmmm, my LX2610SU says every 10H on the FEL. I probably do it a bit more often because of experience with draglines and some wonderful stuff called crater grease. I ruined a few company cars when I was doing draglines service. Same numbers apply to my grapple. I kinda play it by ear. If it looks like it wants grease, I give it some grease. When red tacky grease turns black, I kinda figure it should be replaced with more red tacky grease. If I have a heavy day of loader work, I’ll typically grease the loader because it’s my friend that has really changed the way I work. I do it more to push out things that like to find their way into places they shouldn’t be. I use a general purpose lithium grease for anything that has bearings in it and red tacky for anything that I know doesn’t make a complete revolution but has a lot of pressure on it.

I use a pneumatic gun (because I don’t have 3 arms and hands to hold the hose, hold the gun, and pump the handle) for the red/tacky, and a trigger pump for the stuff like the bearings on the WC68 chipper shaft bearings. I intentionally got guns with different size supply tubes so I don’t mix the two and don’t have to think about which one to use. There used to be an option for zerk size to make using the wrong grease next to impossible, much like the different size openings for fuel inlets. But since no one greases stuff anymore, hard to find different sized zerks.

 

[OldPaint]

We always used Boraxo Heavy Duty at the machine shop but learned Borax can cause health issues?

I wonder how all the folks in Trona CA faired living ground zero for Borax?

Borax has very serious health issues for cockroaches. Think about it, the ONE creature that will likely survive a nuclear holocaust has problems with borax. There’s your sign……

 

[WinterDeere]

Ummmmm, my LX2610SU says every 10H on the FEL.

JD says every 10 hours for the FEL.

I'm not running out to the filing cabinet in my barn at 11:30pm, but I'll try to remember to pull the manuals tomorrow to check. It's possible I mis-transcribed the schedule into the spreadsheet I keep on my laptop for OPE maintenance, but I don't think I did.

It's also possible that my 855 tractor manual had a 50 hour interval for loader pins, and I just copied/pasted that over to the 3033R section of the spreadsheet. Again, 50 machine hours is probably 5 - 10 hours of actual loader movement, in most cases.

 

[CH4Ohio]

It retails for $169 bare tool or $230 with a battery and charger.

Yeah. I thought the price was almost as amusing as the picture of the item. Hard to believe someone wouldn't spend a few minutes cleaning something up before offering it for sale. (Or maybe he did . . . )

 

[dodge man]

Of course no one sits in one spot and moves the loader up and down and curling and dumping for 10 hours straight. I look at it that if I have the loader on and am using it off and on for 10 hours it needs greased.

 

[WinterDeere]

Of course no one sits in one spot and moves the loader up and down and curling and dumping for 10 hours straight. I look at it that if I have the loader on and am using it off and on for 10 hours it needs greased.

Maybe! Grease is certainly a heck of a lot cheaper than re-bushing a loader and replacing the pins.

I wish the manufacturers were clearer on this, but conditions vary so widely that it's probably hard for them to give exact numbers.

I have seen worn-out loaders, in fact I owned one for about 10 years, due to a prior owner leaving the thing outdoors and probably never greasing it. But whether my twice-yearly greasing is sufficient, compared to those who report greasing it literally every day they use it... I'm not sure we'll be able to draw any conclusion for another 20-30 years!