hard to reach grease fitting

[jackhorn01]

I am a fairly new tractor owner, little over a year. Anyway, there is a grease fitting on my mahindra bush hog drive shaft that i cannot get to. Its the one under the plastic shield closest to the bush hog. Behind the knuckles that are joined. I have tried disconnecting the drive shaft from the tractor and moving it around in different positions trying to expose it etc... I'm sure its something simple, but could someone please help? I am getting mad lol.

 

[Texasmark]

Drill a hole in the cover to access it. Also you will still have to do your disconnect thing and roll it around to access it. I have several grease guns and one of them has a solid tube for reaching (stabbing) places like that where you don't have access to get your hand in around the connector to connect it.

 

[mddorange]

:welcome:
To TBN Jack. This is a great site to get answers.

I hate greasing PTO shafts because of how hard they are to find the zerks.

 

[CincyFlyer]

Yeah, the PTO shafts are the worst. I counted all of my zerks on my tractor and implements: 72!! (BH and FEL is nearly half of that number.) Some are just nearly impossible to get to.
One note on some Mahindras: there is an outboard support bearing for an engine shaft that has a zerk! It's usually below and behind the radiator.

 

[ruffdog]

My Toolcat has a bunch of zerks but they are not too bad to get at. My wife's Deere x744 doesn't have a ton of zerks but one is really hard to get at. It is on the driveshaft that goes from the engine to the hydro toward the hydro end. If the mowing deck is on, you can't get under to see it.

 

[Fallon]

I am a fairly new tractor owner, little over a year. Anyway, there is a grease fitting on my mahindra bush hog drive shaft that i cannot get to. Its the one under the plastic shield closest to the bush hog. Behind the knuckles that are joined. I have tried disconnecting the drive shaft from the tractor and moving it around in different positions trying to expose it etc... I'm sure its something simple, but could someone please help? I am getting mad lol.

You would assume wrong.

PTO zerks are a pain. I tend to trim the plastic shields so the are a lot shorter on the ends. You generally still have to unhook the PTO shaft & flop the end to the side to be able to get to the zerk easily.

 

[oosik]

I have a zerk in almost the exact same place on my pto shaft. Its to grease the area where the inner and outer shaft slide together. My answer - forget the zerk. Once a year - before putting the pto shaft away - pull it apart - liberally grease in "inner shaft" - slide the two sections back together. Done for another year.

 

[ruffdog]

Without the pto shaft guard on, you can really get to those zerks easy....but, I would never suggest not having one installed.

 

[Texasmark]

I didn't want to suggest to others what I do with my equipment as I know how I act around it when it's running, but yes!

 

[Oldpath05]

I'm getting tire of trying to grease this one fitting, it became very hard when I put my skid plate on so it's either cut a hole in the floor board, take the hard to put back on skid-plate and or wait for Lock&lube to come out with a 12" long coupling. Well I do not want to cut the floor board, I do not want to struggle with skid plate and I cant wait for some outfit to come out with a 12" grease coupling so I took matter in my own hands and spent 2 hrs trying to make an grease ext, that was harder then I thought, trying find something to screw into something, didn't have pipe thread taps so that made it even harder, for some reason grease fittings dont like regular threads. I did end up with something that works.

 

[DuckSlayer1017]

Replace the zerk with a small barb fitting or compression fitting. Run hose or tubing to an easier to reach place and add a zerk to the end. That’s basically how we do it on our automation equipment. Offen we run multiple grease points into a manifold so the operator s only need to grease one point on the machine.

 

[Seven Gables]

Can't say for sure without seeing your pto guard but quite a few of those plastic pto guards you can release a lock then give a twist/turn on the guard and it will pull back completely exposing the u joint or cv joint. B

 

[Oaktree]

Who designs this stuff? it's like the automakers that make it so you need to disassemble half the vehicle to change a bulb.

 

[EddieWalker]

On my finish mower, the zerk fittings are burried under the protective metal plates, so Land Pride attached rubber hoses to where the zerk would fit that are about a foot long, then the zerk fitting is attached to the end of the hose. One broke on me and it turns out that the flexible hose that comes with a grease gun is the exact same threads, so I replaced it with that. Instead of trying to get the grease gun to your zerk, why not extend the zerk fitting out farther with either a flexible hose or a solid tube?

 

[Oldpath05]

Replace the zerk with a small barb fitting or compression fitting. Run hose or tubing to an easier to reach place and add a zerk to the end. That’s basically how we do it on our automation equipment. Offen we run multiple grease points into a manifold so the operator s only need to grease one point on the machine.

That sounds like a novel idea, so re you talking about something like this>>>>>>>> https://www.amazon.com/Anderson-Met...NPT+Connector&qid=1559084366&s=gateway&sr=8-1

I failed to mention that the grease fitting is on my brake petal shaft, I forgot what size it is, but I'm sure it's the small zerk, are there barb fittings that fit the small zerk?

 

[Oldpath05]

Who designs this stuff? it's like the automakers that make it so you need to disassemble half the vehicle to change a bulb.

Well you could say that's my fault, the under side grease fittings were easy til I added a skid plate, you know how it is sometimes, when you cure one problem you end up creating another one.

 

[Oldpath05]

On my finish mower, the zerk fittings are burried under the protective metal plates, so Land Pride attached rubber hoses to where the zerk would fit that are about a foot long, then the zerk fitting is attached to the end of the hose. One broke on me and it turns out that the flexible hose that comes with a grease gun is the exact same threads, so I replaced it with that. Instead of trying to get the grease gun to your zerk, why not extend the zerk fitting out farther with either a flexible hose or a solid tube?

Clever but on my brake pedal shaft I'm quite sure those threads are smaller then a grease gun hose, of coarse with pipe threads it adds more complication.

 

[LouNY]

That sounds like a novel idea, so re you talking about something like this>>>>>>>> https://www.amazon.com/Anderson-Met...NPT+Connector&qid=1559084366&s=gateway&sr=8-1

I failed to mention that the grease fitting is on my brake petal shaft, I forgot what size it is, but I'm sure it's the small zerk, are there barb fittings that fit the small zerk?

You can get grease fitting extension line kits;

Grease Extension Hoses: Relocate Hard-to-Reach Grease Fittings

 

[EddieWalker]

You can get grease fitting extension line kits;

Grease Extension Hoses: Relocate Hard-to-Reach Grease Fittings

That's a pretty cool site. Lots of great ideas!!!

 

[PILOON]

OK, on my tractor the main front axle 'pivot' is down under and hard to access.
SO, I added some 1/8 piping to bring the zerk up to a handy accessible location.
(LOL, my old bones simply do not allow me to crawl under to grease that Zerk)
Once I had purged the extension clear greasing was a snap.
You simply have to think outside of the 'box'.