Zerk fitting snapped while greasing

So if I grease front bearings once a year, how many pumps should be enough? 3?

A) There is no need to grease the bearings that often, unless you drive 100K miles a year:
B) Standard front wheel bearing should be cleaned of old grease, then properly packed.

Then why even have a Zerk fitting on the front wheel bearings?

Easy !! No good reason…

Carl

Right. At least I have a plan now. (car has 48000 miles)

  1. Drive around a few weeks and keep taking off wheel to clean grease off the inside.
  2. Once that’s done spilling out, put a piece of aluminum tape on hub cap pin hole.
  3. Re-pack bearings in about 10 years?

Ha, I like your photo, reminds me as a kid when they spin the cardboard and you drip colored paint onto it. Spin-art, I think it was called. I’ll take a photo of my wheel and see if it looks artistic or not :wink:

Always wondered that, too.

I used to put paper discs on computer fans and spin them, then paint …anyways, I wouldn’t fill up so soon again anyways. I generally wonder about Zerk fittings. For the driveshaft, some argue to leave them alone as the grease wouldn’t reach every point anyways and the risk of introducing dirt was higher. For the IRS some are to be greased and some are not worth it as they don’t really work?
My ball joints will soon be the later style, got them really cheap, like ten bucks each. Three still in the boot :upside_down_face:
Doesn’t leave us with many parts to grease, does it. I’ll put tape over the vent and hope that this helps, but the bearing should be “empty” by now.

How much driving did it take to get the excess grease out?

About 1.5 years or roughly 7000mi to the picture I think. But it started to come out much earlier and I didn’t check for a while, so you might be good after one or two months :slightly_smiling_face:

Pretty! I think you should frame that! :slight_smile:

U-joints have four bearings and four seals. When you apply grease to the zerk with a grease gun, it pressurizes the cross until one seal blows out. Then all the grease goes in that direction. So you end up with one well-greased bearing with a blown-out seal and three unlubricated bearings with intact seals.

I did! I have your book, thank you very much! I actually forgot that I had it, but ran across it because I in good conscious put the felt back in even though I purchased and installed new ones in one carrier. I just couldn’t wrap my head around why felt? it’s like a sponge to liquid; but not grease. Grease surface tension is to strong to be absorbed in felt. I even tried putting the greasey gooey mess in the oven to see if I could get the grease to be absorbed.

The final straw for me is when I establishing the preload on the carrier fulcrum bearings just to watch nearly all the grease squeeze out of the felt. So out they came Amazon here we come a new set of carrier seals.

I do have one question, and that how to protect the seal? then I assume the shims now ive between the seal (seat / spacer?) and the bearing?

Thanks again for all of your effort for assembling a book. I’m attempting to do the same thing on my youtube channel Jag Mods. everything I do on my Jag(s) I’m taping. Even the screw ups. with an addendum saying. don’t do what I just did.

Thanx again
Mark

I’m going to rip them out tomorrow.

If you put the seals with the spring lip on the inside then you don’t need to do anything (that is what I did ).
The smaller outer lip will keep water and dirt out.

Aristides

1 Like

How long have the seals been in place? Have you taken it apart since you put the seals in to see how the components wear? I’m really keen on the idea of the seal idea. I would put the spring (lip) on the inside.

I thought it was obvious that the spring should go on the inside.

It is to me, but according to the book there are gyrations stated with replacing the spring with an oring…

Sent from my BlackBerry 10 smartphone on the Verizon Wireless 4G LTE network.

It’s been about five years since, but I haven’t gone beck there since, (I guess this is a good sign)
I will have to revisit this area soon as my dif output seals need replacement.
I will report back with my findings (but it might take some time )

Best
Aristides

Thank you! That would be wonderful!
:blush: