grease nipples broken off

[m7040]

I have a a Deere 8B BH that has some of the grease nipples torn out of the housings and the treads are stripped to the point that inserting a new nipple will not work. Any experience anyone in a simple fix? Welding a nut on the outside will that work as a fix?

 

[radman1]

Some grease fittings are designed to be pressed/tapped into place and don't have threads. You might consider that type of fitting. May require drilling different diameter hole? Other possibiltiy would be getting a tap and die set and making new threads. May also require drilling larger hole.
I don't think welding a small nut will work. The weld will probably distort the nut not allow it to be threaded by the grease zerk.

 

[bucmeister]

And here I was thinking welding on a nut would be a good idea since that is what I plan to do to add fittings to a large gate pivot points that my dad made years back. Figure I can run a tap in to true up the threads after the fact if they are too bad to start the zerk. That said, personally I would use a large nut that would allow the use of the larger 1/8" NPT fittings versus the small 1/4"-28 fittings.

 

[TwinWillows]

TSC has 7/16 drivein grease zerks that you'd have to drill the hole a little larger to use. Or you could drill out & tap for 1/8" pipe thread zerks. That's what I did when I overhauled my disc. Those are much stronger than the little 1/4" kind.

 

[m7040]

like to avoid taking it apart so may be I can drill and blow the flakes out with air and then use a bottom tap to cut the new treads. Will that work?

 

[DieselPower]

You didn't mention what size the stripped fitting is. What was it? You may find that you can use a thread forming grease fitting of the next larger size.

Check Alemite Grease Fittings or
Plews Edelmann

As previously suggested you may also find that a drive in type grease fitting may work and without modifying the current hole.

 

[sandman2234]

Welding a nut should work, but I would use it as a last resort, since the heat will mess up your paint, the current could also pit the inner part, depending on the flow of electricity. Placement of the ground is critical!
Drilling and tapping will probably also have drawbacks. No way are you going to remove all the metal filings, especially the tiny ones that you almost can't see (the ones that usually end up in your hands). Blowing them out with air might just be the ticket to send them further into the hole and into the area your trying to avoid them getting into.
Either way is better than no grease at all, but disasembly is the best and hardest way.
Get a selection of press in and metric/standard threads and see if one gets close. You might get lucky!
David from jax

 

[BTDT]

Well, Frits, that's the pits. (Sorry ), Where is this located? Any pics? If say, it's the loader bucket pin location zert, can you remove pin, and drill and tap new hole? Maybe drill it in a location that is not as apt to get knocked off. Maybe just weld on a short nipple, and screw new zert into that. A pic would help.

 

[m7040]

Thank you for the replie. I think what Diesel was suggesting makes the most sense. Did not even know about tread forming nipples. Will do some measuring and find out what will work and then order a selection of nipples to try out.