Stovebolt.com Forums The Shop Area General Truck Talk Best way to clean grease fittings

In a hot industrial environment we use to pull the fitting and squirt Sili-Kroil (we simply call it Kroil here) into the hole and let it sit long enough to smoke a cigarette then shoot the grease to it....I'd say at least 95% of the time it worked.

I just picked up a old Snuff can full of old grease fittings all different sizes and packed full of smelly old grease. I dumped them in a glass jar of kerosene and let them soak for a week they came out great, now I have lots of replacement nipples and they aren't the cheap 1 dollar variety that twist and break when you install them.

Kinda hard to put Made In China grease zerks on my project, had to do it though... Did soak some in lacquer thinner overnite, cleaned up nice

I found replacing a few of the zerks doesn't solve the problem. Driver side King Pin being one of them. Is stated above the best way to solve that problem?

Thanks

I had an old tractor mechanic tell me to heat the area around the zerk with a torch, just enough to soften the old grease. I also cleaned the zerks and bushing cavities out and then shot some new grease in. It worked quite well for me.

Good luck,

....and jack the truck up and see if it helps to get the weight off the wheels. With a helper it might be possible to get him to wiggle/turn the wheels and get the king pins to take the grease??
Its worked for me a time or two but maybe mine was not quite as bad?

Dave and Randy submitted a good Tech Tip about replacing kingpins that explains why the front axle should be jacked up when greasing.

http://www.stovebolt.com/techtips/kingpins.htm

I greased mine a couple weeks ago and had one fitting that wouldn't take grease. A little heat solved the problem.

Matt

I need to spend time under the truck today giving it a complete grease job. Hasn’t been done in many years. Want to do it right, so what is the correct type grease I should buy today?
Black, red, white..... they all seem the same to me. Thanks.

Somewhere I have a an old tool that belonged to my Dad. Not sure what it is called and don't recall ever seeing another one. The cap end screws off and pack it full of grease. Screw the cap end back on, put the fitting end on the clogged grease zerk and tap the cap end with a hammer. My Dad used it on all the farm equipment and vehicles. It clears nearly all clogged grease zerks.

Be careful when purchasing new Zerk fittings, the metric ones are hard to distinguish when out of the container.

Ed