Grease shortage

[number two]

Seems like I saw tubes of Kubota branded polyurea grease at the dealer(Valvoline?)

Good Luck!

 

[CalG]

My local TSC has MP grease on sale, $2 a tube. I bought some....

 

[RidgeTopWVA]

So here we go again. Polyurea grease in MY area sold out ”indefinitely”.
No John Deere Green polyurea or Lucas green polyurea grease anywhere.
Checked everywhere, box stores, hardware stores, farm stores, tractor dealers. Nothing, zip, nada.

I have 2 automatic greasers I have to keep loaded with grease or Hay Dude makes no hay.

So the question is, what type of grease mixes with polyurea grease without clogging issues?
Things are getting desperate.

I don't know if this helps you or not :

Grease Compatibility Chart and Reference Guide

When it comes to lubrication in industrial plants, most maintenance people strive for consistency – the use of the same products over a long period of time. This generally allows for smooth...

www.machinerylubrication.com

I can ask my local John Deere dealership if they have any , how much do you need ? Are you completely out ? Maybe figure out how to get it to you ASAP if it is to be found.

 

[etpm]

I don't know that answer. Polyurea is the thickener in the John Deere HD Polyurea Grease that carries the oil like a sponge carries water. And we've discussed before that Lucas Green seems to use the same chemistry as the JD Poly...so those two should be as interchangeable as greases get.

Just for some background so others can follow this grease problem :

Greases are basically oil soaked into a thickener like water into a sponge. Several substances are used as thickeners. Polyurea is a popular powder thickener because it is a reliable synthetic. Other greases use either a soap or a clay based thickener. Soaps and clays both are built around light metal molecules mostly of lithium, calcium, barium.

The oil used in the thickener is not the problem. All the oils are compatible. The problem is that when incompatible greases get together they harden and at the same time they expel their oil

This is because different thickeners are chemically reactive with each other. They don't corrode the bearing surface, but instead they can react to clump up, harden and cake. When they do, they take up space and while they do their clumping they dump their oil content. Basically if you use incompatible greases the bearing space becomes filled up with dirt and no room for oil. You can see it easy enough if you take the joint apart. You end up scraping out this dry crud. Usually the first clue you have to incompatibility is that the zerk seems to nbe jammed or stuck or shut or not accepting grease.

Hay Dude, I don't have an answer. JD SD Polyurea (and Lucas) advertise as being a new style shear stabilized poly urea - they used to be conventional but changed - and shear stable is way better than the old conventional poly....but I'd still stay away from calcium and lithium based greases anyway. Even the JD products.

Frankly I'd find the genuine JD/Lucas or skip a couple of lube cycles. Maybe rig up a zerk injector to pump in some 80/90 in critical joints until I could get some genuine. This sucks....

Some literature - some if a bit deep - is attached. The RP report is valuable because it compares different manufacturer's compatibility charts instead of comparing compatibility directly.
The other one is heavy on chemistry... read at your peril...
rScotty

Thank You So Much for posting this info. You obviously have knowledge about this subject that folks here can benefit from, me included. I have known for years about grease incompatibility and how greases are made of oils and carriers. And that it is the carriers that mostly cause problems. Many folks don't understand that it is usually the carrier causing the problem, not the oil. People also often don't realize that the oil in the carrier is what is doing the lubricating and that this oil eventually gets used up. Even though the grease seems to be OK, just thicker, they think everything is OK. Your post explains the incompatibility and the oil dump very well. Better than I have ever been able to explain.
I have a CNC mill that has linear bearing ways and it uses grease instead of way oil like my other CNC machines. The grease it uses is MUST be the correct grease for many reasons. But tractors need the correct greases too. Even though the tractor isn't holding a position to .0001" inch it still needs the correct lubrication to operate properly and to last a long time. So using the correct greases is necessary. Your post will help those who read it understand greases better and if they use the information correctly will lengthen the lives of their greased equipment.
Cheers,
Eric

 

[Hay Dude]

I don't know if this helps you or not :

Grease Compatibility Chart and Reference Guide

When it comes to lubrication in industrial plants, most maintenance people strive for consistency – the use of the same products over a long period of time. This generally allows for smooth...

www.machinerylubrication.com

I can ask my local John Deere dealership if they have any , how much do you need ? Are you completely out ? Maybe figure out how to get it to you ASAP if it is to be found.

I found the compatible grease I need to use, but it wasn’t easy. Theres no way to mix greases and guarantee success, so it took a lot of investigating to find it.

Not being able to find one of the most common grease brands each year gets stressful. Theres no reason for this.

 

[mrmikey]

Theres no reason for this.

Yup, as was said earlier, caused by artificial short supply, it's called gouging.

 

[Hay Dude]

Yup, as was said earlier, caused by artificial short supply, it's called gouging.

I spoke with a couple other farmers in my area. Both told me what I already (kinda) knew.
Stock up in the winter.

You would think grease would be something that the manufacturers would have plenty of during the warmer months when its more in demand, but I guess thats the downside of Capitalism????

 

[Omega Woods]

There’s places to buy grease, and there’s places gouging people for grease.
After I discovered Wal mart, John Deere and every local store is out (except I found 3 tubes at an Auto-Zone), I asked one of my kids to poke around on the internet.

O’Oreilly Auto parts had 150 tubes in a warehouse. (You know….O-O-O- O‘reilleeeeeeeeeeee Auto parts OW!)

I ordered 40 of them at about $7.50/tube. Should be here Wednesday.

Now I can go back to baling next week. Sheesh…

Still think it’s ridiculous how grease goes out of stock seemingly every summer for the last 2-3 years.

I guess I will have to make sure to buy plenty over the winter.

This is what I was going to recommend. I bought five tubes from them a couple of weeks ago as a test run and I'll be getting my Lucas Green from them in the future.

Maybe I should ordered some more before I post this!!

 

[Hay Dude]

Don’t know if I mentioned this previously, but JEGS claimed to have it. I ordered 30 tubes and of course, they promptly took my $159 and gave me a delivery date of July 12th.
On July 11th, they sent me an email that it was “on back order, no delivery date specified”.

Isn’t that cute?
They take your money FIRST, then tell you it’s out of stock the day before delivery.

Of course I get non stop emails from them because I had to “create an account”.

“JEGS” should be called “JERKS”.

 

[mo1]

I spoke with a couple other farmers in my area. Both told me what I already (kinda) knew.
Stock up in the winter.

You would think grease would be something that the manufacturers would have plenty of during the warmer months when its more in demand, but I guess thats the downside of Capitalism????

I try to get all of the consumables I think I might need over the winter or in the spring well ahead of hay season. The only thing I have had any issues getting this year was small square baler twine since the baler only really works well with 7200 sisal. Once I found some I bought plenty. Last year herbicide was almost impossible to get, this year it has been okay. I have not had issues with grease but with the exception of the disc mower gearboxes which require a very specific cornhead type grease (and don't have to be regreased very often), everything else can work fine with the red high-temp lithium grease and that's what I buy by the case.

 

[LouNY]

It sounds like you may have found what you need but;
Schaeffer’s Polyurea Grease for Electric Motors | Buy1Oils

 

[Torvy]

The manufacturing problem is a lot like the great TP shortage during the troubles.

The factories for producing grease have a fixed capacity X tubes per hour. They can make the same amount summer or winter. If they built more capacity to meet summer demand, they would have equipment and people sitting idle in the winter. It would also increase costs which would roll down to prices.

Even if the corporations who make it were OK with it, they are driven by stockholders and cannot always do what seems to make sense in a way a sole proprietor might.

I see a lot of good advice about stocking up a bit in the off-season. I would add that those of us who don't NEED any right now should take a deep breath and not exacerbate the problem by trying to stock up now.

 

[Hay Dude]

Update: Not out of the woods yet. Got 2 boxes from UPS today. Both from O’Reilly. Not very heavy. Each box had only 3 single tubes in them. Not the 40 tubes I expected….

 

[Southernspeed]

Update: Not out of the woods yet. Got 2 boxes from UPS today. Both from O’Reilly. Not very heavy. Each box had only 3 single tubes in them. Not the 40 tubes I expected….

That's not a good sign!

 

[3930dave]

I found the compatible grease I need to use, but it wasn’t easy. Theres no way to mix greases and guarantee success, so it took a lot of investigating to find it.

Not being able to find one of the most common grease brands each year gets stressful. Theres no reason for this.

Up here in Canada, we have our priorities straight...... you can buy dope on every third street corner. Reliably stock Industrial Supplies..... that's so 1950, why bother.

I first heard about this grease shortage talking with the Parts Mgr at the local Intl dealer, back to March.

I used to joke about Things Grinding to A Halt.......

I need to joke less.

Rgds, D.

 

[Hay Dude]

Up here in Canada, we have our priorities straight...... you can buy dope on every third street corner. Reliably stock Industrial Supplies..... that's so 1950, why bother.

I first heard about this grease shortage talking with the Parts Mgr at the local Intl dealer, back to March.

I used to joke about Things Grinding to A Halt.......

I need to joke less.

Rgds, D.

You set the trends, we follow.
This new progressive, administrative state we have here now is really soweeeeeet !!!!!!!

 

[WM75Guy]

It’s a bit smaller than one on a mining machine. Holds about 15 tubes of grease. Krone gives you a special loader for it. You put the tube in the loader, pull plunger back and push the tube of grease into a 1” opening, then push the plunger in from the back to push the grease into the reservoir.

It’s typical for me to push 5-10 tubes into it. Has a “low grease” warning on the monitor in the cab.

Any way to use a 35# bucket with a manual pump? Or an air pump if you have air in the field. Would be the equivalent of 40 tubes at $5.43 a tube, not counting the one time cost of the pump.

 

[ruffdog]

A fire that levels a grease manufacturing plant will put a dent into the supply chain....

Chemtool fire causes potential grease shortage

 

[mo1]

Up here in Canada, we have our priorities straight...... you can buy dope on every third street corner. Reliably stock Industrial Supplies..... that's so 1950, why bother.

I first heard about this grease shortage talking with the Parts Mgr at the local Intl dealer, back to March.

I used to joke about Things Grinding to A Halt.......

I need to joke less.

Rgds, D.

Hey, we have you beaten on that one as there is a ditchweed dope "dispensary" on about every street corner here. You can pull up to about any stoplight with your windows down and smell somebody smoking that crap, or go into any store and pass by somebody just reeking of it. It's kind of spooky when you go into a place where the people there really shouldn't be smoking dope such as an electrical supply house, truck stop, or a gun store and you smell it. I swear at least as many people are smoking dope now as smoked cigarettes when I was a kid, and when I was a kid you could still smoke cigarettes just about everywhere.

The only thing I've ever done with ditchweed is spray it with Grazon and 2,4-D to get rid of it in fields because, well, it's a noxious weed.

Maybe if we figure out how to make grease out of ditchweed we'll solve the shortage

 

[Hay Dude]

Any way to use a 35# bucket with a manual pump? Or an air pump if you have air in the field. Would be the equivalent of 40 tubes at $5.43 a tube, not counting the one time cost of the pump.

View attachment 811373View attachment 811374

Yeah, no.
The device Krone gives you a special tool to load the grease. It won’t work with that. It uses tubes only.
Besides, I’m not into lugging the heavy thing around up a ladder and into the baling chamber.
Heck a battery powered grease gun is enough of a PITA.
That would be nice for a shop , but not so much in the field.

I’m sticking with tubes. Hopefully more coming, but losing faith.