Hi all, I bought myself an electric grease gun and am wondering if it will be ok to keep it stored in my work truck over the winter months. Will the cold damage the grease gun or battery? Any thoughts? Thanks.
Welcome to the Forums IamUlt!:drinkup I don't know much about electric grease guns, I use an air operated system. However I do know that even with an air grease pump, the grease doesn't move too well in cold weather and you experience way more cold than I do. In the winter months we usually grease in the afternoon as the grease has had some time to warm up and moves easier into the P&B's, adding the fact the P&B's are warm from operating. I would assume with your much colder temps, you would need a fully charged battery and a warm tube of grease.
Try putting the grease gun on the dash on your ride to work (assuming you wiped it off first). The heat from the defrosters will make things deffinetly flow easier. I put our manuel pump guns in the exaust while the machine is warming up. This makes life a looooot easier in the winter time. Just don't do what I have done and forget you put it in there. "anyone smell grease burnig?":beatsme .....................OH S--T forgot the now black and smoking grease gun. who da thought the exaust would get that hot.
Watch out for new lithium batteries will be permanently damage by extreme cold or heat. try keep in shop or house not truck. The guys that told me, don't have a clue about saskatchewan winter. Burrrr. Also I had problems using battery grease gun to expand tracks. Grease flowed out of gun, but not enough pressure to expand tracks. Lost 1/2 day thinking problem with machine!!
In our very mild winter in florida battery life greatly suffers. Good luck with extreme cold we do warm or grease on the dash as well.
ANY battery will lose power if left out in the cold for too long.Why not just bring it in at night where it's warm???X3 on keeping a tube in the warm cab going to work.
I do the exhaust pipe trick as well, but its a manual gun.
I bought a used truck a while back from a guy in Nevada that did alot of welding on ski lifts and ski resort related welding repairs. He actually mounted the holder for the grease gun under the hood of his truck and had a little metal box over the fender well that held 2 tubes. Being from sunny flatland CA i never thought about it before that. Dont know if theres even enough room under the hood of modern truck to mount a grease gun though.
I have had several 'newer' electric grease guns have a problem in colder weather with pressure not being able to tension up tracks or 'hard zerks', finally tracked the problem down to the ball&seat not working well and allowing pressure to go back into the gun. One was a 14v alemite whoever assembled it at the factory got some thread sealant on the seat and it was causing it to not pump grease on hard fittings the other one started having similar symptoms so I pulled it apart and could not find anything interfering with the ball and seat so I stretched the spring that pushes on the ball to make it seal and it seamed to fix it..... for about a week then it did it again so this time I cleaned out the whole area again but this time I found a punch just big enough to fit in over top of the ball and struck it just hard enough to make the seat conform to the ball I guess... anyways that was about 3-4 months ago and quite a few tubes of grease, it has been working ever since [knocks on wood] So if your gun is not pumping grease in to a zerk and it seems to pump(or not) when not on a zerk this could be the same problem as it seems to happen more in cold weather also.
Most of our mechanics just keep it behind their seat. Keeps it warm enough for the grease to still move. If any of you need breakdowns of your Alemite grease pumps/guns let me know I have all the diagrams and most of the repair parts.
Yeah your going to want to keep your gun warm, I leave mine on the floorboards of the passenger side starting in october...
We have Lincoln electric grease guns, and most of our guys that have them just leave them in their company trucks. They usually still work just fine, and we haven't had many problems with them.
I have two eletric lincoln grease guns,a 12volt and 14.4volt and got tired of dealing with battery packs when greasing my dragline which takes alot of grease. I came up with the idea of hooking the 12 volt to the machines battery with it running and the 14.4 to the alternator and works like a charm and no more battery packs to fool with.
Most batteries in all their literature admit somewhere that below 35º F, they lose half their charge. Two choices just have some extra batteries or, keep them warm. Working with any battery tool during the winter outside, I have an extra battery tucked inside my overalls keeping fairly close to 98.6º. In my log truck, I use an air operated Lincoln grease gun, it was cheaper, easier to keep clean, (brake cleaner) and I always have air. I looked long and hard at a battery Lincoln, but the air won out. And yes, on grease day, it is inside the cab of the truck with three extra tubes to cover the day’s greasing.
I have two of the Lincoln grease guns (12v and 14.4v), and they work well, but I leave them at the shop because I was forever forgetting to charge them. We mount grease gun holders in the hydraulic compartment of our hoes for winter work and it provides enough heat so that greasing is not too bad in the winter. The exhaust pipe trick is still propably my favorite though. We grease and fuel at the end of each day, and while shoveling out the tracks and fueling let the grease gun warm up in the exhaust. It if forbidden in my company to ever put a grease gun or grease tubes in the cab of equipment or pickups. One oops is not worth the benefit.
I run both a 120V and 12 V charger for my 14.4 Lincoln.Always keep the 12 V charger on the pass. floorboard for some emergency charging.