We change body style's on vehicles every couple years, yet the grease gun and Zerk has remained unchanged for a century. Can't anybody design a better mouse trap when it comes to greasing.....no leeky leeky please...bah ha
:Banghead:Banghead:Banghead:Banghead Grandpa- I am with you! Just got done fighting with the umpteen zerks on my excavator and I get so freakin' sick of watching grease go everywhere but in the $#&^%# bushing. At least with a battery powered grease gun one hand doesn't get as tired but the other one that's holding the hose end jammed tight on to the zerk still cramps up. If we can send a guy to the moon why to christ can we not make a greasing system that WORKS!!! :Banghead:Banghead:Banghead:Banghead
Bah ha ha, didnt mean to get ya so riled up! But at least there is two of us that feel that way....lol
You mean they're not supposed to leak? Not a better mouse trap, but there is a lot of cheap, inferior grease zerks and couplers out there. If you spend a few bucks more and get genuine Alemite zerks and couplers, you'll have better results.
I agree, Grandpa, there has to be a better way. Then when the adaptor wears and there is grease going everywhere, you replace it with a new adaptor and it grips the nipple tighter than you ever could with vice grips and you can't get the bloody thing off, so you get wild with it it and give it an almighty wrench and break the end off the nipple. And have you ever noticed that the one that grabs the tightest is always inside a cavity where, you can't twist the grease hose to release it. RnR.
I have seen button type that you slide on or off, but I've not tried them.
If they leak a new head almost always makes things better.I have found that the oriental nipples are troublesome and worse are the scandanavian ones.Once in a while you will find a good head that will work on all three but they are rare. The Akermans used to come with a grease gun but the dealers used to confiscate them and give you a cheap POS to replace it which didn't work on their fittings either.As ATCO said,the better brands perform better.The zerks also wear after a while and sometimes they are in an area that allows them to be hit with rocks etc and need to be changed quite often.If an "operator" does not grease regularly it can take some time to get a fitting to pass grease again as well.Ron G
I particularly enjoy it when I fill a u-joint up, then the little check ball in the zerk doesn't close, and a thin steady stream of new grease comes right back out the way it went in.
Or how about when its a hundred degrees outside and you keep your greasegun in your tool box and find that the grease has melted to oil and flowed otta ur gun allover ur stuff.......
I hate it when you buy a new machine and send it out then get the call from your new operator that none of the zerks will take grease. helps if you scrape the paint off them first lol. I have used the slide on ones on the gravel crusher for the big bearings with the big can with the pump on it they sure work well
Ya, you think someone would invent one similar to those only smaller and better yet.
I think it would work if someone designed a coupler that had a sliding sleeve, like on an air chuck, that would lock the grips firmly on the zerk, then you simply slide back the sleeve and it allows the grips to release hold on the zerk.
There ya go ATCO...market it........would be nice if you could release your sleeve from the grease gun handle....make life easy.
Well get on it you just thought of a way to make millions of green backs!!!
Hey about ten years ago I had one with a slider on it. Never seen one like it since. The button types dont care for them. Our new paver has them for the steering. I think Alemite stuff is pretty good. Auto greasers when they work properly are pretty tuff to beat. just my 2 cents worth. Telescooper
LoL, I wish I could think that far into it and figure out a way to get it done.
Hire an Engineering research firm to develop it then patent and market it!
In my perfect world, I would be more than glad to do that. But, in my real world, raising 3 grandkids for the last nine years gets first bids on what's in my wallet.
Grease????? whats that? lol
Its what gramps has gramma do to the equipment every day.
I use the cartridges and the thing that drives me nuts is when you change a cartridge and you cannot get the sucker to bleed, so you stand there pumping for 10 minutes with nothing coming out the end, or worse you get a cartridge that is only half empty and you get a jam or airlock that no amount of pumping will get any grease coming out of the gun. Baz:Banghead
yeah, I have a similar problem with my one grease gun. Seem to work better in the summer when the grease is warm though. maybe leave teh gun or the fresh tubes somewhere warm in teh winter will help.:beatsme I always hate when the emtpy tube decides that staying in the grease gun is a good idea, then you spend a couple minutes coating your hands, clothes, and anything else nearby in grease trying to get a hold of the thing to pry it out.:Banghead I like Atco's idea of a sliding coupler like the quick releases on an air hose. Cause it never fails, the zerk you can't reach with a pipe type is the one you have to hold a hose type end on and pump wtih a third hand... oh wait I only have two hands. That would solve that problem.
The venerable grease gun is a love/hate thing with me, dislike it as much as anyone, but realise just comes with part of being a wrench. Sooo, one must conquer the beast. :yup First; pay the bucks, get a good quality grease gun. You want cheap, you'll get cheap performance. Cheap grease guns should come with a printed copy of preferred swear words to be uttered while working with gun. Second; good coupler. There's a particular Alemite coupler that I've had good results with, I'll see if I can find a part # for yuns. Changing the cartridges? 1) unscrew and remove pump end. 2) pull T handle out, then back in. this usually pushes tube out. if not, 3) pull T handle out, then twist lock it out. grease tubes leave a small ring of aluminum from removed pull off cap. pinch and grip the aluminum ring with tongue and groove pliers, pull tube out. 4) insert new tube, remove pull off cap. 5) screw pump end back on, but only a enough threads to hold it on. 6) release T handle from lock position and push rod in. 7) screw cartridge body into pump head while pumping gun. air will purge around threads as you screwing it in and grease will start going through pump. If all this sophisticated methodology fails, 8) refer to list of preferred swear words.
My favorite part is the way I can cut my finger on the inside of the cartridge... or is it the gun? Either way, luckily I did it twice in less than 20 seconds... so that helps stimulate my memory to not do it again.
I usually hook the aluminum ring over the threads of an exposed bolt and it will pop right out,no mess.Pick it up with a stick to dispose of it.ATCO has the routine down to a science.You have to do it the hard way enough times to get tired of it and look for a better way.Ron G
DUh Never thought of the bolt idea. Thanks. One of my best grease guns never spits out the tube, and I've always used pliers like poor old ATCO.
DUh Never thought of the bolt idea. Thanks. One of my best grease guns never spits out the tube, and I've always used pliers like the poor old Bobcat tech ATCO.
Either that or it's so cold it doesn't come outta the gun and if it does good luck getting it to actually go threw that tiny hole.
Hang your grease gun in your Exhaust Pipe for a few minutes and and it will be Smooth like Butter BTY, if you don't start the motor you will be there till spring. ointhead
When the grease in the tube is partially used and then the stupid thing air locks try this. Pull the piston rod out and twist it to engage the plunger. Now put pressure against the rod while at the same time pumping the handle. It has always eliminated the air for me in just a few pumps.
Tapping the head of it while holding it upside down while bleeding it helps too. If at all possible applying grease to warm operating machines is recommended, of course its a good idea to have the grease gun somewhere warm. Depending on local temps where you are might help dictate a proper time too grease the machine. To show up at the job in the morning after the machine sitting all nite in cold temps and expect it too take grease is going to give you fits...after you have been running it and putting it under load the zercks should take grease easily. Leaving the grease gun somewhere not to close to the engine for a little while...
lincoln guns are junk. i have an alemite that i love. heavy hitter. my 14 volt lincoln sucks, as did the 12 volt.
Isn't it amayzing how the small things in life irratate you the most, I'd agree with all the posts here but I have a quesiton, has anyone tried the bulk system they call a contractors bulk air greaser where you put in about twenty pounds of grease and its supposed to stay dirt free and dry and never airlock and all that bs of a sales line and that way instead of fighting the dummy tubes every five minutes triying to get grease out of them you could just keep pumping grease. If I'd figure out how long I spent every dummy tube change trying to get the air lock out and I think its longer than I spend pumping the whole tube out. I told my kids once that there should be an air operated bulk system that has a hose 500 ft long and held about 500 lbs of grease so I could grease things and only fight the airlock once every month instead of every ten minutes. Nobody I've talked to has had any experience with them only the ones made for garages and indoor locations. As for changing the tips, never done it how do you wear out the tip if you can't get the airlock out of the gun first, I wear the mechanism out trying to get the airlocks out long before I've ever worn out a tip. I went with a lincoln air grease gun and like the fact you just pull the trigger and it spits out grease constantly and my family saw it and asked whats so great and I told them after you put in a new dummy tube you just hold the trigger until it eventually shoots out grease and bang and tap on it and twist off the hose and whatever else it takes until it eventually works and that way I'm not tuckered out BEFORE I start to grease the machines, now we need the mass bulk quantitiy thing, any idea on what works for that or if any of them work?
I don't know why some of you guys are having problems bleeding off the air after a cartridge changeout.Very simply put the new cartridge in,spin on the plunger end with the plunger still pulled out and locked only app.half way,unlock said plunger,push down on plunger S-L-O-W-L-Y until all air escapes while pumping handle.Plunger should be completely inside gun by now,tighten plunger end and grease away.A neat trick I've been using for years on a manual gun when cold out is to put the plunger end in a vertical exhaust pipe to warm her up.NOT TOO LONG THOUGH--EXHAUST GETS HOT!!!!!!!!!
I bought a Legacy 12v battery operated grease gun today. Anyone have one of these and are they any good?
I use hand pump gun, electric gun, and air powered drum pump gun in shop. I kept blowing the Heavy Duty couplers from NAPA with the drum pump. Went to my local Alemite dealer, he handed me an Alemite #308730 coupler, have had good results with it.
grease guns Nothing can get me more po'd than grease guns and greasing. Have a Bushog 15' batwing on my Kubota, between the loader and the bushog, there must be at least 50 zerks to hit. Thought WOW, "need a pneumatic grease gun....just imagine how much easy it's gone be now"..... Your honor, the defendant pleads not guilty by reason of insanity :Banghead:Banghead I have yet to get it to operate properly
As much as I get frustrated by grease gun problems, I am glad to have moved on from the days when you had to climb all over an excavator to grease every nipple, like having to climb to the top of the boom to grease the stick and the lift rams and leaning over muddy tracks to grease the slew bearing in four separate places. When you would spend 15-20 minutes to get grease to come out of the gun and then had to contend with that horrible greasing regime, it was such a pleasure to actually start moving dirt. Hooray for central greasing.:thumbsup
Atco, Ron, and Milling all posted my secrets. To get the air out I normally screw on the head just enough that it won't come off. Pump it a little until I can feel the grease pumping then screw it the rest of the way on. I have a hand Cat gun from years ago that works great, but NAPA has only crap. The 2 reason I have found that grease leaks out of the gun is that its either really cheap or its that fancy syn grease. IIRC I have Lubmasters in my Cat gun and it has sat in my 90* garage for years and theres not a drop of oil from it. From what I can remember it never leaked in my truck when I carried it, but my Napa gun with cheap TSC lithium grease stays in its own bucket because it leaks out a tablespoon of oil a week.
Have not read all the posts but good quality zerks and couplings will solve alot of problems, I fill my hand guns thru a zerk in the head with a pneumatic gun which eliminates the air pocket in cartridges. I don't have any foreign equipment, is there a difference in metric zerks that may give additional problems?
Yup. The only thing I can add is to take a look at a new grease gun and see how the plunger works. I becomes instanly clear how to bleed the air out.
When storing the grease gun or even when not using it if it has a tendency to weep I **** the spring to take the pressure off of the grease tube.If you can hang it by the cocking handle that is better yet. The piston in grease guns these days are meant to be used with grease cartridges so even if you fill them with another grease gun through a fitting in the bleed port the cartridge needs to be in place to seal the piston to keep it from leaking.Rather obvious stuff but well worth considering if you have a gun that leaks.Ron G
In Aus i use McNaught grease guns and we have a good run with them, (my old boss told me when they are new they don't need grease, and when there old it's to late to start greasing he did no maintanance!!!!!) Leroy
I reckon you must be the only one, Leroy, I've been using them for forty years and I haven't had a reliable one yet. I used Mini-Lubes for many years and and they all leaked and fell apart. The ones I bought twenty years later than the first ones, still had the same problems. The spot welding in the lids let go on most of them and I was always replacing the plunger seals in the guns and quite often had to replace the whole gun. I still have a half a dozen of them cluttering up the corner of the shed, I am not really sure why. I bought an air operated gun for the 20kg buckets a few years ago and that has been hit and miss as well. We are waiting for it to come back now from being serviced, because it stopped working. A lot of people I have spoken to, also had problems with McNaught stuff as well. About the only one that has been any good is a lever gun that takes cartridges. RnR.
The only problem I have with my grease guns are the [ not sure what its called ] but when I get it on a grease surk if there not lined up perfect grease will squirt out the sides or if the surk takes grease a little hard it will squirt out. I sometimes think that the greas surks we are buying from overseas are made a thousands under size, but here again just my opinion.
I usually throw away the coupler that comes with the gun and buy the best one I can get, which usually is larger in size. I also get a coupler fitting and add another hose or get a longer hose which makes the chore go easier.
Not that I have seen
Why not buy machines with or add Auto-Lube?
We have just purchased a machine that came with Auto-Lube and it is great. How it works in the long term we have yet to see, but I know auto greasers have been around for a long time. I have also heard stories of pins running dry and squealing because the grease holes became blocked. The initial expense is probably the main reason they are not used as often, it used to $6,000 to have a unit fitted here, but it would be a lot more than that now. The loader we have the auto greaser on, will be used in a stockpile situation, but as for our other machines that are used for tree clearing, I think an auto greaser would be totally impractical. I have visions of lots of little grease fountains, as the tree branches systematically rip the grease tubes off the loader frame. RnR.
Good Observation RocknRoses. Maybe another HEF member has some input about the durability of Auto-Lube supply lines in the trees. I am pretty sure that they do not keep pressure on the lines all the time. Many people do not know that the cost machine hour of greasing alone can in some cases, equal the cost per machine hour of Oil and Filter changes! Not so much for the grease but its the time and frequency that drives the cost up.
I got one for ya. Can anyone tell the difference between a 10mm zerk and a 1/8th NPT Zerk? (I know I can't) I'm not sure but I think a lot of machines use BPT???
Yeah, it's old imperial 1/8" BPT (british pipe taper) threads RobVG, very little diff with 1/8" NPT (national pipe taper), but the thread pitch is different by just a few threads. I'm having one hell of a time finding some 1/8" BPT, everybody keeps giving me 1/8" NPT! Dang it...there is a difference! :Banghead
In NPT 1/8 is 27 threads/inch; BSPT is 28 1/4 and 3/8 are NPT 18;BSPT 19 1/2 and 3/4 are all 14/inch
RocksnRoses; My brother says the same he hates mcnaught, i buy pistol grip guns and i have had no trouble with them, mind you one man one gun, My blokes would wreck guns made with 1/2 inch wall thick pipe, and there all trying to sell me auto greasers but 8-10k per unit????thats alot time and grease and this way thay have to look all over the machine while greasing Cheers Leroy
The difference in appearance is very obvious if you hold them side by side as the metric fitting will have fine threads and the fractional fitting will have course threads.If you have a bad fitting on a machine that needs grease and have no replacement I swap a known good fitting from another location on the same machine until you can replace the bad fitting.Ron G
The tread pitch is also different, I can't remember for sure but its a few degrees off and one wil screw into the other a few treads but it'll leak anyhow because of the difference in pitch, theres also a difference in metric treads as well, theres about a half dozen different metrics so you need to know what perticular metric thread your dealing with or like around here we use national pipe, brithish pipe, a jap metric, and also two other metric thats harder to get than the common jap metric, and nobody can standardize this stuff worldwide? I've got serval different tap and die sets for the one's I've got the greatest problems with and have already put threads on a pound in zerk so I can grease these oddball threaded zerk holes, drives a guy nuts at times. All the experts that handle fittings don't even understand that theres a difference and I won't even start in on hydraulic fittings and hoses and that whole nightmare of finding the correct hose with the correct ends on that doesn't take a month to get and just have someone make one up for me instead. Those thread pitches are so close they screw together and will end up leaking because they are still just enough off. The person who standardizes this stuff deserves to be a millionaire in my opinion.
Want to try this Swedish one with "screw in" cartridges? Want to try this Swedish one with "screw in" cartridges? NO MESS!!
What I love is it seems like every time I pick up a grease gun it just happens to be empty! Or it runs out on the second pump!
The Japanese have a cartridge, looks like it's made from the thinist plastic, consintina tube, with a toothpaste style tread to screw into the gun head, so when it's finished it's 3/8 inch high no mess and very little to pelt away when empty Cheers Leroy
I saw one of those accordion tubes once. It came in the toolbox of a grey market machine. Kept it for a souvenir for awhile. Never seen one since.
They are used in Sweden....neat setup... See link from the Swedish web site
Ron VG; Great concept don't know why we don't have them down under !!! akkamaan; thats the same style, but the ones i saw arn't colored Cheers Leroy
I think they are transparent but it might be colored grease....LOL
That makes sense akkamaan (the old colored grease trick):drinkup
grease guns are old fashioned, no question about it. but as the old saying goes, "if it aint broke, dont fix it." as some have said though, grease guns are all about coin. the more you pay, the better you get. i have 2 manual CAT branded grease guns. one with a flexy end, one rigid. both are superb, rarely airlock and are easy to prime. also just arrived today was my new snap on 18v greasegun, not sure how it will perform but it looks the business. possibly a little devoid form the subject of why wont someone build a new grease gun/applicator. but, there ae now greaselessbushes available. they say, that they out last conventional bushes, even if they are grease daily. we all know that some grease points get missed or forgotton about, thats assuming the operator even greases them! call me old fashioned, but i wont hear a word of it! if it moves grease it. simple rule and i stick to it.
This seems like a good place to post this. I'm rather chuffed as the English would say. Noticed the tracks were sagging on my boss's Zaxis 160. Knowing who butters my bread, I tried to adjust them. Both zerks were worn down so the grease just squirted from the coupler. Looked at the parts book to see if I could get just the nipple. No breakdown. Called the parts counter, "Yup, you cant' get those seperately". I knew that because I've tried before. But the nipple came out with a 7mm. Took the valve out and brought it with me and said, "Show me your zerk collection." I found a fitting with about the same size nipple and took it out to the truck and removed it. It threaded about 1/4 turn into the old valve and then I rammed it down tight. Long story short, it worked. Adjusted the tracks and slammed the idlers in to some rocks to see if they'ed blow off. Still ok. I did buy a new valve at $30 just incase the fix didn't work. The Zerk was $1.
>my new snap on 18v greasegun si25: How do you like it? Care to post a photo? 621 Rocker