I don't seem to have any clearance/motion issues.
I think the zerk was likely defective and/or somebody torqued the heck out of it while installing it - it was done at my usual shop (10+ years going there), so my money is on a bad zerk. After seeing the other new zerk vomiting back grease, I'm suspecting really poor QC on these in general - they came from different sources/garages/parts of the province. (Yeah, I know, they still probably all came from the same Chinese factory).
Not that I'm hard on my vehicles (quite the opposite in fact), but even with my crazy luck at finding weird defects, I can't really see something flying up off the road and hitting that zerk - it is tucked into the centre of the U joint body, not on the end cup !. Maybe not impossible for that kind of hit, but the odds would be pretty insane, even on my scale, and that's saying something !
What I sometimes get frustrated with is parts quality. At the consumer end of the market, there is so much price pressure that quality often gets spotty. So what else do you buy ? I can't believe F1 or Nascar teams would use these cr*p parts - what source do they use for zerks ?
I wouldn't mind paying $1.50 or more for one zerk, as long as the quality was there.
??????? D.
