</font><font color="blue" class="small">( Put about 10-12 ounces in each of the spindles (an entire tube) when you first get them, then about 6-8 pumps every 10 hours will take care of it. You'll see the grease come out of the top at the pulley junction when they are full. Be sure to pump them up all the way when new though. )</font>
I've had a lot of people tell me that doing that is too much. However, I will have to agree with you based on my experience. I've always hit each spindle on my decks with about 5 pumps every 8 hours. The oldest mower deck I own is now on it's 13th year of mowing. I've never had a spindle fail on it, or any other of my mower decks. All things considered, in my opinion, grease is cheap!
I've wondered where all the grease had gone over the years as well. I think my dog answered the question for me. He came up to the house earlier this spring and had a nice big clump of thick grease rubbed into the fur on his back. I was really confused as to where he got that since he has never been off of our property. Later I saw him flop down and roll in the yard. I thought he was rolling in poo. Nope, it was a big wad of grass covered old grease that had dropped out of the bottom of my deck when I was mowing.
Here is my theory (feel free to disagree). I think I must be filling any void in the spindles when I grease them; but I'm not putting enough in for it to run out. As the spindles heat up during operation, the grease expands and some drops out. When I'm finished, the spindle and grease cool, leaving me with a new void to be filled. At 8 hours, this void gets filled with fresh grease, and we start all over again.
What do you think? My dog generally kills and and drags to my porch most any critter that wonders onto my property, (except the deer - but he is still trying /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif) so I think the grease monkey would have been history long ago. /forums/images/graemlins/cool.gif
