hard to reach grease fitting

jackhorn01 · Sep 1, 2018

I am a fairly new tractor owner, little over a year. Anyway, there is a grease fitting on my mahindra bush hog drive shaft that i cannot get to. Its the one under the plastic shield closest to the bush hog. Behind the knuckles that are joined. I have tried disconnecting the drive shaft from the tractor and moving it around in different positions trying to expose it etc... I'm sure its something simple, but could someone please help? I am getting mad lol.

Texasmark · Sep 1, 2018

Drill a hole in the cover to access it. Also you will still have to do your disconnect thing and roll it around to access it. I have several grease guns and one of them has a solid tube for reaching (stabbing) places like that where you don't have access to get your hand in around the connector to connect it.

mddorange · Sep 2, 2018

:welcome:
To TBN Jack. This is a great site to get answers.

I hate greasing PTO shafts because of how hard they are to find the zerks.

CincyFlyer · Sep 2, 2018

Yeah, the PTO shafts are the worst. I counted all of my zerks on my tractor and implements: 72!! (BH and FEL is nearly half of that number.) Some are just nearly impossible to get to.
One note on some Mahindras: there is an outboard support bearing for an engine shaft that has a zerk! It's usually below and behind the radiator.

ruffdog · Sep 2, 2018

My Toolcat has a bunch of zerks but they are not too bad to get at. My wife's Deere x744 doesn't have a ton of zerks but one is really hard to get at. It is on the driveshaft that goes from the engine to the hydro toward the hydro end. If the mowing deck is on, you can't get under to see it.

Fallon · Sep 3, 2018

jackhorn01 said:
I am a fairly new tractor owner, little over a year. Anyway, there is a grease fitting on my mahindra bush hog drive shaft that i cannot get to. Its the one under the plastic shield closest to the bush hog. Behind the knuckles that are joined. I have tried disconnecting the drive shaft from the tractor and moving it around in different positions trying to expose it etc... I'm sure its something simple, but could someone please help? I am getting mad lol.

You would assume wrong.

PTO zerks are a pain. I tend to trim the plastic shields so the are a lot shorter on the ends. You generally still have to unhook the PTO shaft & flop the end to the side to be able to get to the zerk easily.

oosik · Sep 3, 2018

I have a zerk in almost the exact same place on my pto shaft. Its to grease the area where the inner and outer shaft slide together. My answer - forget the zerk. Once a year - before putting the pto shaft away - pull it apart - liberally grease in "inner shaft" - slide the two sections back together. Done for another year.

ruffdog · Sep 3, 2018

Without the pto shaft guard on, you can really get to those zerks easy....but, I would never suggest not having one installed.

Texasmark · Sep 3, 2018

I didn't want to suggest to others what I do with my equipment as I know how I act around it when it's running, but yes!

Oldpath05 · May 27, 2019

I'm getting tire of trying to grease this one fitting, it became very hard when I put my skid plate on so it's either cut a hole in the floor board, take the hard to put back on skid-plate and or wait for Lock&lube to come out with a 12" long coupling. Well I do not want to cut the floor board, I do not want to struggle with skid plate and I cant wait for some outfit to come out with a 12" grease coupling so I took matter in my own hands and spent 2 hrs trying to make an grease ext, that was harder then I thought, trying find something to screw into something, didn't have pipe thread taps so that made it even harder, for some reason grease fittings dont like regular threads. I did end up with something that works.