loose grease fittings, shame on me!

[Frankenkubota]

my tractor, mx5800, is almost 2 years old and just passed 300 hours.

soon after buying, during an early greasing, i broke off one of the zerks because it was loose. not the end of the world but a PITA to get out and then difficult to find correct replacement, until i went to the dealer.

I always tease the dealer that i have the smallest $ amount on one of their receipts, about 80 cents i think.

After i broke the first one i checked the rest, a few were way too loose.

Fast forward 1 year and 10-15 grease jobs later. yesterday i had a zerk just fall out while greasing! now it won't go back in! i probably jacked the female threads on the tractor so today i find an 11mm tap to clean up the threads....i hope.

the first experience with the loose zerks i'm calling shame on them. this time it's shame on me!

i checked all the remaining zerks and found 50% needed snugging, 40% were fine and 2 or 3 were very very loose, just waiting to cause me more heartburn.

I would urge everyone to check your zerks, mine were either 8,9,10, or 11 mm. i would also clean them up real good before you go at them with sockets, mine sockets are now full of grease.

 

[jjp8182]

Had similar happen on a zerk for one of the finish mower casters (actually broke in half) and the lower half had to be extracted -- have had the replacement zerk fall out now as well.

I may need to try re-threading it .... though as thin as the material is/was I'm tempted to add another layer or two of metal around the grease point and then re-dril and tap that just to give the threads more material to grab.

 

[CH4Ohio]

I bought a box of the step-sided tap-in zerks at TSC a while back. It has several sizes in the box. I had one where the threads were pulled out and couldn't get one to thread in properly. Just select one that's snug in the hole and tap it in. Works great. And no need to figure out the English / Metric thing either.

 

[CH4Ohio]

By the way, I'm still trying to figure out why you have "loose zeros"?? I thought this was going to be a thread about accounting or finance . . .

 

[bigtiller]

Those loose zeros will probably come home when they get hungry.

 

[dodge man]

Damn it, someone beat me to the zero joke. Don’t you love autocorrect. Zerk just isn’t in the dictionary.

 

[bdhsfz6]

I had this happen on my old L3430, which I traded for my current MX5800. One of the self tapping zerks worked fine on the old L. I'll have to check the new MX.
Thanks for the tip.

 

[Frankenkubota]

loose zeros?

the dreaded auto correct got me again.

 

[IndyJay]

loose zeros?

the dreaded auto correct got me again.

Sounds like something a developer needs to fix to tighten up binary code...

 

[Xfaxman]

loose zeros?

the dreaded auto correct got me again.

Click "Edit" on the bottom line of your first post and change it.