Grease - is there no better way? Can we talk about this?

[ultrarunner]

Here is a used grease gun I found online. Only $200. Looks like it's had a pretty easy life and been well taken care of . . .

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I've observed that grease is messy and greasy. I just keep plain old cheap paper towels next to the grease gun and use as needed. Buy yourself a can of those GOJO or Fast Orange hand-wipes to help final cleanup -- they're worth every penny.

PS -- Decided not to buy the grease gun . . .

We always used Boraxo Heavy Duty at the machine shop but learned Borax can cause health issues?

I wonder how all the folks in Trona CA faired living ground zero for Borax?

 

[WinterDeere]

Sealed bearings ought to last longer, but I cannot help noticing that in the last 50 years or so I've replaced a lot more ruined sealed bearings than I have greaseable ones.

I agree, on tractors, but much less so on mowers. Zero turn mowers are 2500 hour or 20 year machines, and most sealed bearings are rated way beyond those numbers.

Tractors obviously last a lot longer, I've owned several over 30 years, and one over 60 years. My old 60 year machine is out there still running in someone else's collection, today. But even so, I'd bet the manufactuers have a 20'ish year "design lifetime" in mind when selecting components.

 

[Fixastuff]

An electric grease gun doesn't have a huge benefit for most homeowner size machines. But get a BIG machine like an industrial backhoe or giant farm tractor with huge attachments that have a lot of fittings and you'll get to appreciate one pretty quick if you grease it regularly. Not everybody works with small stuff.

Or when it’s 0 degrees out side.

 

[4570Man]

Here is a used grease gun I found online. Only $200. Looks like it's had a pretty easy life and been well taken care of . . .

View attachment 3829914



I've observed that grease is messy and greasy. I just keep plain old cheap paper towels next to the grease gun and use as needed. Buy yourself a can of those GOJO or Fast Orange hand-wipes to help final cleanup -- they're worth every penny.

PS -- Decided not to buy the grease gun . . .

It retails for $169 bare tool or $230 with a battery and charger.

 

[OldPaint]

Recommended service schedule for pedal and brake linkage on tractor and zero turn is 100 hours or annual. Tractor trunion and mower spindles are spec'd for 50 hours or twice annual. FEL pins are also spec'd at 50 hours, which is about 2x per year for me.

Ummmmm, my LX2610SU says every 10H on the FEL. I probably do it a bit more often because of experience with draglines and some wonderful stuff called crater grease. I ruined a few company cars when I was doing draglines service. Same numbers apply to my grapple. I kinda play it by ear. If it looks like it wants grease, I give it some grease. When red tacky grease turns black, I kinda figure it should be replaced with more red tacky grease. If I have a heavy day of loader work, I’ll typically grease the loader because it’s my friend that has really changed the way I work. I do it more to push out things that like to find their way into places they shouldn’t be. I use a general purpose lithium grease for anything that has bearings in it and red tacky for anything that I know doesn’t make a complete revolution but has a lot of pressure on it.

I use a pneumatic gun (because I don’t have 3 arms and hands to hold the hose, hold the gun, and pump the handle) for the red/tacky, and a trigger pump for the stuff like the bearings on the WC68 chipper shaft bearings. I intentionally got guns with different size supply tubes so I don’t mix the two and don’t have to think about which one to use. There used to be an option for zerk size to make using the wrong grease next to impossible, much like the different size openings for fuel inlets. But since no one greases stuff anymore, hard to find different sized zerks.

 

[OldPaint]

We always used Boraxo Heavy Duty at the machine shop but learned Borax can cause health issues?

I wonder how all the folks in Trona CA faired living ground zero for Borax?

Borax has very serious health issues for cockroaches. Think about it, the ONE creature that will likely survive a nuclear holocaust has problems with borax. There’s your sign……

 

[WinterDeere]

Ummmmm, my LX2610SU says every 10H on the FEL.

JD says every 10 hours for the FEL.

I'm not running out to the filing cabinet in my barn at 11:30pm, but I'll try to remember to pull the manuals tomorrow to check. It's possible I mis-transcribed the schedule into the spreadsheet I keep on my laptop for OPE maintenance, but I don't think I did.

It's also possible that my 855 tractor manual had a 50 hour interval for loader pins, and I just copied/pasted that over to the 3033R section of the spreadsheet. Again, 50 machine hours is probably 5 - 10 hours of actual loader movement, in most cases.

 

[CH4Ohio]

It retails for $169 bare tool or $230 with a battery and charger.

Yeah. I thought the price was almost as amusing as the picture of the item. Hard to believe someone wouldn't spend a few minutes cleaning something up before offering it for sale. (Or maybe he did . . . )

 

[dodge man]

Of course no one sits in one spot and moves the loader up and down and curling and dumping for 10 hours straight. I look at it that if I have the loader on and am using it off and on for 10 hours it needs greased.

 

[WinterDeere]

Of course no one sits in one spot and moves the loader up and down and curling and dumping for 10 hours straight. I look at it that if I have the loader on and am using it off and on for 10 hours it needs greased.

Maybe! Grease is certainly a heck of a lot cheaper than re-bushing a loader and replacing the pins.

I wish the manufacturers were clearer on this, but conditions vary so widely that it's probably hard for them to give exact numbers.

I have seen worn-out loaders, in fact I owned one for about 10 years, due to a prior owner leaving the thing outdoors and probably never greasing it. But whether my twice-yearly greasing is sufficient, compared to those who report greasing it literally every day they use it... I'm not sure we'll be able to draw any conclusion for another 20-30 years!