Was reading the Hitachi manual and it's saying to grease every 100 hours. That even make sense?! I've always greased every few fuel fills, probably every 25-50hrs depending on the equipment and time of year.
Dang dead on here today!
Grease every time I refuel. Keeps it simple.
In this year of record inflation & considering the price of grease the industry standard has changed---grease when rust trails are present.
If the machine is like new and the grease seals hold it in really well, I suppose 100 hours is do-able...but not with my stuff. I would rather over grease rather than score a pin or wear a bushing. I think my PC200 said every 40 hours for the main linkage points but it gets it every 8-12 hours. Greasing happens every 4-8 hours on my mulchers. Every fuel fill on my excavators and other pieces. Grease is cheaper than down time. I purchase in 120 lb kegs or 55 gal drums and use air powered grease pumps pulling off of 120 lb kegs. I quit the grease tube guns over 10 years ago and saved myself a lot of time/money/frustration/effort. The time savings alone paid for itself within the first year. I also install grease manifold blocks to centralize and equalize the grease distribution. Fewer grease points = faster servicing and fewer fittings to clog. Some of my machines have 16 grease points tied to one grease fitting at the manifold input. The manifold gives an equal share to each point. You can also double, triple, etc a dosage to a specific line if you skip manifold points properly. Pricey at first to get all of the lines and fittings but well worth the savings.
every morning or you're fired
Was explained by last employer, EXPECTED to use grease gun Every First Start of a day, look machine over and find failures beginning. Exercise machine prior to use to warm hydraulics and flow systems so not immediately shock loaded.
I've tended to grease every morning before starting out when working machinery. Trucks were once per week and carried pneumatic grease guns in the tool compartments. With the advent of the battery powered grease guns it's so much easier to get this seemingly miniscule task completed on any equipment. My pneumatic shop grease pump seldom gets use any longer except to refill the grease gun cartridges, (yeah, I do that). Once the barrel is expended it will go off into the corner to reside if found to not be cost effective. Believe it or not you pay for that tube that is casually thrown away when empty. Savings add up if purchased in bulk and refilled which is easily done. Another thing I'll throw out there is that the Harbor Freight battery operated greasers work just as well as the Milwaukee, and the DeWalt units at half the cost as evidenced by the sights I see in the implement dealer. I wouldn't have believed it till using them myself. I have a Milwaukee and it works well but going to purchase two of the Harbor Freight "Hercules" units to keep with equipment(s); my dozer being one of them.
When the squeeking gets too annoying.
That's the oiler's job
Not much cost savings between tubes or drum. Sometimes tubes are cheaper even. Drum is fine in a shop, but would be a pain in the woods.
I've always greased up at the end of the day. The reason being that the grease is worm and I get to inspect for any faults and fix if possible.
Must be a geographic, or vendor thing as the cost increases when purchased by the tube as opposed in bulk for me. I do however "drill down" into cost per ounce also. I don't purchase grease or oils at box stores but rather a local oils Exxon/Mobil distributor at wholesale pricing.
Unfortunately that is too common a plan. Theory being if machine wants grease it will ask for it! Much of our larger equipment at the quarry either came with or was converted to automatic greasers. They can be good as long as someone is looking machine over good every day. Also on some other machines that were not set up with the auto-greasing systems, like one old R-35 Terex. While doing some major repair work to front suspension and steering linkage I installed grease blocks just behind the front bumper. That way one could grease everything from one point without a problem. Those trucks had many points to grease on just the front end. Something like a dozen points or more just for the front end!
Same here - 80lb kegs are much cheaper than tubes from our fuel supplier. We use both depending on the job and refill the plastic tubes from the keg at the shop from time to time just save the plastic end caps for the refilled ones. If it's a big enough project we'll have a job box on site with keg and air comp.
Old memories of auto greaser mechanisms of the past, know the newer are far more effective and efficient just hard to get past the horror stories/memories and dripping messes of the 70s/80s. Tubing is better, starting out on New machines is better, materials used to lube are better and the valving to direct flows infinitely better but still!!!
My main job is running a bulk lubes warehouse. Between tube and keg it's maybe $100-150 savings, depending on the grease. For a large shop it makes sense, but for small outfits, the cost to setup a drum pump, try to drag it around the shop, yard, woods, etc tubes make more sense.
I grease every 8 operating hours. That might mean every 3 days,
Where I worked years ago-if operating in water operators would grease every 4 hrs.
I used to be conscientious about greasing when working in water until an old dragline operator had a chat with me. He told me in no uncertain terms I was doing the wrong thing and to grease up at end of day only, there's enough lubrication in water and with the silt in the water and grease all I was doing was making grinding paste. A lot of my work at that time was digging gravel out of a river and in 20' of water you could hear the bucket curl . That digger was traded at 11000 hours with all the original pins and bushes.
That 4 hour thing is also for operating a breaker. They beat the grease away at an abnormal rate.
Local oil vendor I use charges $1.42 per 14oz plastic tube no matter the content. In a 120# grease drum, there are 137.14 14oz tubes of grease equivalency. If you multiply this 137.14 tubes times $1.42 cost per tube, that is $194.74 in cost for the tubes only that are thrown away afterward in most cases. Using my Lincoln, or Balcrank grease pumps, I can refill a tube in about 12 seconds with fresh grease from the bulk keg, barrel, or drum. Say I can do three per minute if set up for the operation. I don't really feel the need to drill this down any further but a savings pushing say $150.00, (somewhat accounting for labor) over the contents of the barrel is worth it to me. It's very easy to let these little things go as trivial but when you pay the bills and expenses, these seemingly minor expenses really "add up" so you look for ways to save money, yet find balance. I can't answer for others but I always preferred to operate profitably and that included being frugal, but prudent at times. All my opinions of course.
I can think of three operators that would argue the last two pages, everyone has a different opinion about grease. But I can tell you one--don't grease the fifth and hit ice it could go straight.
when we were two shift dredging the Duwamish, the day deck engineer would fuel and I got the short end and had to grease. We had a power gun and tubes for the draw works, but I had a drum and powerhead greaser with a long hose for the bucket. It went through a lot of grease. You'd be swapping tubes constantly with that thing if you tried to use a grease gun. Anvil's website The bucket rack had a ladder to get to the top shivs, and I would set up a ladder to get to the heel pins. 6 yard digging bucket on the left and a rehandle bucket (that I never had reeved) on the right. Once a day was plenty, even with two shifts of digging.
The original Auto-lube systems they used at the quarries were Trabon systems that used 80W90 gear oil and on machines with air brakes they simply spliced into a brake line to power the oil pump. Every time a brake was applied some joint got a shot of oil! They could be a little messy but not as bad a a grease system that was putting too much grease out. The biggest weak point of that system was the thin nylon tubing that with age would get hard and break. The second weakest point was who ever was responsible to report or fix any broken lines. I can only recall one machine out of dozens I dealt with over the years where that system was cared for and worked like they could. It was on a 966C Cat loader. Operator was Buck and his boss was a good guy who let Buck take care of his machine. If Buck noticed a broken line he would finish loading the truck he was at then run to shop and repair line, boss never said no! One time I had to reseal one of the lift cylinders, forget the hours but they were right up there. When the pin was slid out of the ram the only "wear" was a slight polishing of the chrome, just slightly shinier than the the nonmoving area of the pin. When that machine was replaced with a newer machine do to high hours it was as tight as it was the day it left the factory and never had a pin or bushing replaced
On the smaller cranes, the operator would lay out the boom flat and I would walk out to grease the shivs about once a week, when we were doing crane work. On that dredge gig the day shift guy walked the boom as that was a little sketchy to do in the dark. The Palouse had an automatic greaser on the boom, as that was a production to lay it down. I'd hit the button on it, and some grease would go away. I did not see where it went, 200' above the deck.
Every 8 hours without exception.
For shops using lots of grease, makes sense. Some shops I've worked, a keg of grease would long expire before it was used up. Grease typically only has a 3 year shelf life. Oil is 5. (And yes, I'm sure someone has used oil that's 60 years old or something. Those time frames are when quality begins to degrade due to separation and other chemical interactions)
A great deal of that has to do with Aromatic or Volatile additives that dissipate or evaporate over time in Open containers, they also tend to separate or just degrade in closed containers. The Base Stock Grease or Oils do not so much degrade just the additives.
I agree totally. I used to run through a 120# drum of chassis lube in six weeks when I had traveling quick lube operations going; mobile servicing trucks. When working in the mines many years ago a 120# barrel would not make a week so pretty high volume usage in both accounts. Back in those days however battery powered greasers either did not exist, or were very unreliable so the pneumatic pumps functioned well. So much easier with the tubes in a battery powered greaser not dragging the heavy grease hose around with you. Always had either an air compressor, or air brakes on the truck for field service so the barrels, (or kegs) were quite easy to make use of. I started refilling the tubes when I seen the overall cost of using them and easy savings to be had. I only have my dozer, backhoe, and several old semi trucks that require greasing and none of these consumes as in times gone past, but for those with high volume needs, I still recommend the practice of refilling the tubes. On top of all that, it gave the office person, (usually a young girl) something else to track and stay off the cell phone on my dime.....
I kept tubes of varied greases, Corn Head for the Farm Tractor and Disc shaft bearings, MFA Gen Purpose synthetic lube for the trucks and the old Hilift I had.
I have an old International Harvester refrigerator that I keep all kinds of grease tubes in. Kept at 55* all year round and the grease stays good and solid. Used to be the "beer fridge" but I've never been a drinker and no longer have employees, so repurposed it could be said.
Here three pages of grease from years back---. * HeavyEquipmentForums
Just struck me as odd to spec 100hr grease intervals. Lot of equipment I've run has stickers reminding to grease daily, every 10hrs, etc.
the mini specifies 250 and 100 hours on the swing fittings. it is common for operators to over grease the swings. Everything else you can grease every 8 or so with no issues.
at my old job we did 25 hrs on all the equipment except the pit loaders they got grease every day. I do every tank of fuel on my personal equipment, easiest way to keep track and remember to do it. at my current job we have 2 Allis chalmers 60x89 gyro crushers, each with a base mounted rock breaker down in the pit for oversize material. the grease schedule on them was grease when new before install, let it wear out and in a year or so, change it out and send for rebuild lol luckily we have automatic grease systems installed now so they last a bit longer, the hoses slowly get ripped off and the boom is very inaccessible so changing a grease hose isn't worth the downtime, same reason they never got greased manually. cheaper to replace the pins and bushings later and let the allis chalmers keep crushing 50+ tons of Iron ore a minute!