Hi I have been shifting a lot of dirt with my machine filling in a waterhole and doing a lot of swinging with a loaded bucket. I have noticed that there is a bit of a noise coming from below as I swing her around. The only grease points that I can find are two grease nipples, one at the front of the swing circle and one 180 degrees behind it. There is plenty of oil in the swing motor. I was wondering if there is some other grease/ lube points that I have missed. The noise is hard to describe but just a bit of a rumble that suggests to me that it could benefit from a bit of lubrication. Would anyone have any suggestions to help me out. Many thanks, Ken
When did you buy the machine?
Not sure where on that machine, but somewhere you can add grease to the metal pan that the swing gear pinion runs in. Some machines I've worked with had a big pipe plug, others had a plate with two bolts. I remember one called for a tube of grease shot into the hole every so many hours. Some have a grease zerk with a line that feeds grease to a fitting tapped into the base plate of the upper frame near the swing drive. These you grease while turning the house to grease the whole gear circle. YMMV
Lantraxco beat me to it. I'm not familiar with your exact model, but there's most likely a ring gear inspection plate somewhere under the boom. Chances are the grease has settled below the ring gear and has hardened up.
The inspection plate for that one should be under the boom just like the other PC's. It's a smaller egg or oval shaped plate with two bolts in it. The two grease points on the outside only lube the rotek and not the pinion.
OK thanks guys, I'll have another good look for something. It quietened down a bit yesterday so possibly has worked a bit of grease that had settled but I'll keep searching until I find something. I have had the machine just coming up to 12 months. Ken
You might try looking under the floor mat in the cab for that plate. The other place I have seen them in to the opposite side of the cab. As I recall you had to remove the big cover on the corner to get to them.
I doubt it's relevant to this machine, but some of the minis I have worked on had a zerk mounted somewhere in the cab, so you could run a grease gun to grease the swing pinion as you slowly rotated the machine, lol.