Hi I can't get grease in the rear axle. The nipples are behind the rear wheel and tube down to the top of rear axle. I'm not sure what they grease but one is blocked. Have disconnected the grease carrying tube from the union in top of the axle and grease comes out so pipe not blocked. It's creaking a lot now so it's dry as a bone. Looks like a strip down job, or would a high pressure gun clear it? Thanks
If you pull it apart you'll probably find that the bushes in the trunnions that support the rear axle are shot, especially having run it so dry it's been creaking. Hope for your sake that bushes are a fix, sometimes when run short of grease like that the outside diameter of the differential pinion housing and the O/D of the trunnion on the back side of the diff will both be badly torn up. Expensive ..........
Thank you, is that an axle off job?
Yes indeedy. You will likely find that the bushes have turned in the tunnion supports and blocked the grease passage to the wear surface between each bush and its respective steel housing. The illustration below is a Cat rear axle from a machine of similar size. The fibre bushes are #29, indicated by the two arrows in Areas B & D. The fear would be that either the diff pinion housing #33 or the rear trunnion #40, or both, will have been foobarbed by lack of grease. Worse still would be if either or both of the cast trunnion supports #49 or #50 are goosed. That'd be the point where it got really expensive.......
Before I pull the axle, I would remove the zork and thread an adapter with a port-o-power or whatever hydraulic hand pump you have available. Put 10k psi on it and see if that doesn't help. The other thing you could do is raise the front with the bucket, place cribbing at the rear of the articulation joint and then lower the front. That will take the load off the rear trunion.
A fast and dirty test to check for wear is to have someone move the machine fore and aft and watch how much the axle housing rotates. Too much rotation puts stress on everything else.
Thank you everyone. I will try these tomorrow and see how it goes.
On my L70E, one trunion unbolted, and the other remained fixed, unlike all my other loaders (deere & cat). Removed bolts to free one pivot, the slid the axle out of the other. What a PITA. Had to make custom tooling to get the damned yoke off first.
Managed to take the weight off the back and get some grease in it.
The grease is packing in at the top, I'm assuming it should throw it around the whole surface when the machine is moving?
It looks to me as though the bush has moved and the grease is coming out between the bush and the frame, as apposed to the pinion and the bush?
as you have said, the bush has a hole for the grease to push through and then channels for the grease to distribute around, I would guess that it has moved or has hard packed old grease blocking the hole, neither of which are good for it.
Looks like you're either going to have to drill a new passage through the bushing or take it down and repair it correctly. As others have pointed out, that bushing rides on the differential carrier. This could get quite expensive in a hurry.
And if the bush has moved/is moving the longer it stays like that the more chance you have of some serious wear to the metal parts (see post #4 above) and that's where it can get very expensive in a hurry if you are not extremely careful.
If you jack the machine up of the axle and clean it up ,you might be able to see how much if any bush remains at the top ,then decide a repair based on the expected use ,value and remaining life of the machine bearing in mind even clapped out ,them machines hold fair value .
Thanks very much everyone. I'm intending on keeping this machine as a spare as there's lots of little bits that need doing. Tomorrow I'm going to try (fingers crossed) and get an angle drill through the nipple hole and go through the bush to make a new channel through. That might work for now and pack it out with grease but if the Bush spins again and blocks it will have to rethink. What size would you suggest drilling with, 4mm?
I would get a pipe extension, thread that in to protect existing threads and drill to ID of pipe extension, use it as a guide to keep you straight