Grease Zerk Extension Suggestions

[John in OH]

I've got a situation on a Scag Zero-turn mower where the grease fittings for the blade spindles are recessed in a very awkward position beneath the V-belt drive pulleys. It is extremely difficult to get a grease gun onto the zerks.

This difficulty would be greatly eased if the grease zerks (1/4-28 tapered thread) were about 2" long instead of their present 3/8"-1/2" length. So, I could probably bore some bar stock on the lathe and make a set of extensions with male and female 1/4"-28 tpi ends, but that sounds like a lot of work.

Has anyone made zerk extensions for similar applications? Any suggestions on how best to proceed with a simple and quick design?

 

[Bondo]

Ayuh,..... Lotsa different option,.....

 

[Bluedodge]

Terminal Supply Co.....

 

[tstaude]

Back in school we set up a sand conveyor with grease extension hoses 6+ feet long, I believe we bought all of the supplies from McMaster-Carr

 

[venturesomerite]

I work On zamboni's that have remote zero fittings for the deck and bearings. Just a hydraulic type hose with a male and female end.

Look around the web, you could put them on top of the deck if you really wanted to. Maybe start with McMaster-Carr

 

[George in Rancho Cordova]

There's a photo around here somewhere that shows Fatty Arbuckle endorsing the Alemite central greasing system on his car in the nineteen twenties.

 

[BD1]

You can get braided stainless hose that works well with the size you need.

 

[gungatim]

when I setup and maintained packaging machinery, we had them modified to move ALL the zerks to a common manifold made out of aluminum. we ran thin nylong line with compression fittings to all the areas of the machine. IIRC, it was thinner than oil pressure guage line on a car, but it's been about 20 yrs. and my memory may be fuzzy. at any rate, It is an easy and common modification/design feature on custom machinery, or anything that has lots of fittings that are hard to get to. only drawback is the initial filling of the lines, and of course making sure the lines stay away from pinch points/hot engine parts, etc...

 

[larry_g]

http://www.lincolnindustrial.com/catalogs/_english/09-lfic/pg02-21.pdf

One solution set above, remote fittings with steel tubing.

lg
no neat sig line

 

[mz44]

Some brake tubing with the right threaded ends will work, just bend it to go where you want.

 

[matt_i]

My guess is the deck sees a lot of motion relative to the frame. So I would want to keep any manifold on the deck itself so the tubing isn't constantly flexing. Also, potentially starting at the spindle centerline and moving outboard of the OD of the spindle-sheave, it could be in conflict with a belt change, if your deck works like that. So I'd make the manifold easy to disconnect if it ever has to be disassembled.

The steel-type extensions are great but you have to be careful they don't become a lever-arm to break off the male thread in a difficult place to work.

I think you are wise to keep the spindles greased. I hit mine on a Woods mower deck every other mowing. The tapered roller bearings are going to very tough and long-lived with regular lube.

I probably sound like an instrumentation freak but I'd try for some Swagelok/yor-lok/duo-lock double-ferrule tube fittings (to get back to NPT-male) and bend a piece of OD-plated or 304 stainless seamless tubing to connect. It's an "industrial" solution, but imo so is your machine.

 

[John in OH]

Follow-up to original posting .....

I got impatient to get the mower spindles greased and the mower back to work. First pic is one of the original stubby zerks jammed back under a belt pully, left side. Really tough to access with a grease gun.



So, decided to make a set of zerk extensions. Took the original stubby 1/4"x28 tpi zerk and punched the ball & spring out of it and brazed it into s 2-1/4" length of 1/8" NPT pipe.



Then, brazed a slug of 1/4" bar stock into the other end, drilled and tapped it for 1/4" x 28 thread.



Cleaned out the inside of the pipe as best as possible and installed a new stubby zerk in the end.



But, then I began to worry ... did I get all the brazing slag out of the pipe? Is there any miscellaneous grit left in the pipe? Is it clean enough??

So, abandoned the home-made zerks and bought some from McMaster-Carr. There were no 1/4"x28 zerks long enough, so bought some longer 1/8" pipe zerks listed and added a 1/4"x28 to 1/8" adapter.



These longer zerks will make life much easier in the future! Why didn't Scag do this in the first place???

 

[EdT]

Possibly to avoid fatigue failure at the mounting point associated with the increased mass of the extended fitting? Nah, short ones are cheaper.

 

[wrench409]

Ya did great John. Those longer fittings will add no weight issues. And they're plenty strong for the task.