Posthole Digger Post Hole Digger (SpeeCo) lost all the oil!

[pmsmechanic]

So generally oil > grease, except for the whole staying put with poor seals aspect. With all that being said, grease isn't that bad in older equipment. New seals for my flail mower would have been $70... I paid $100 for the whole mower. Happily went with grease & expect the gearbox to still work when the rest of the mower falls apart.

So the above was the plans for my free 506 John Deere but the "corn head oil" wasn't staying in anymore so I took the gear box apart. Good think I did because the bottom bearing was next to falling out. So several hours of time and about $250 later I was back in business. To be fair I did replace the blades at the same time.

 

[Fallon]

That's the biggest argument to replace the seals... to see if the seal failed because of a bad bearing while you are in there.