Greasing

[Nick]

How long do you go without regreasing your mowers? Is greasing less then 25hrs. of use overkill?

[lawnman_scott]

No its not. I do mine once a week, and thats not enough by far. Depends on use mostly, but some do it every day.

[Eric ELM]

I would think it depends on the machine you are using. The Dixie Chopper manual says to grease every 50 hours, so I grease it every 25 and I have had good luck doing this. My JD, I had to grease every day and some places twice a day and things still wore out on it. Grease is cheap compared to parts, use your best judgement on greasing.

[Joe W.]

What type of greese is everyone using?

[CLC]

I use reg. grease that I buy at the hardware store I grease every time I sharpen my blades

[Guido]

It depends on what your manufacturer reccomends. As long as your not pumping in so much that you blow the seals, greasing "too soon" won't hurt anything.


Congratulations for even realizing you have to do it! Thats one of the biggest things people neglect with machinery, and its one of the easiest. Preventive maintenance will make or break your luck with equipment.

[awm]

takes me back to about 1980 . i ran a used snapper
all season then pt of another befor the lack of grease stopped it.
lets just say the repairman let me know he didnt think i was particularly smart.lesson learned

[Tvov]

Myself and my crews grease the front caster wheels and sulky connections every morning (these are really what get the most random directional use). At the beginning of every month, we grease all the other points, including blade spindles, drive wheel points, and all the misc points. This has kept our equipment running way beyond what is expected.

I guess I should check the site more often, but the new look is interesting.

[Avery]

We grease equipment every morning with synthetic grease. Lots of sand here and we cut rain or shine. New grease pushes out the sand and water.

[Scag48]

I grease my all my grease points every day on my Groundsmaster. I have to grease the steering joint, rear wheel bearings, front casters, and the steering wheel (yes, there is a zerk there!). I'm using Moly something, can't remember what it's called, my grandpa put it in there. I figure you can't grease enough. Better safe then sorry!

[mowerman90]

A Toro mechanic once told me that Toro did a test to see how long front castor wheel bearings would last using different grease intervels. Here in Fl we've got lots of sand and afternoon thunderstorms in the summer making castor bearings wear out rather quickly. The test was set up so that one mower got greased "every day, another got it once per week, and the third was never greased.

The results were as follows:
longest lasting - once per day greasing
second longest lasting - never greased
third longest lasting - once per week

Hard to believe isn't it. Since I'm too lazy to grease every day I don't grease my castor bearings at all and as per the test results, they "do last" longer than greasing once per week. Once per day pushes out the sand and water while once per week makes it stick. I'd say that the best policy is like Eric's, grease twice as often as the manufacturer recomends and you can't go wrong.

[Keith]

Watch out for flying grease caps!

I just got done changing the oil on the ZTMax. I usually grease everything once a week or so. It doesn't take much with the exception of the front castor wheel bearings. The castor yoke bearings don't use much at all. I have had them lift up with just a couple squirts every two weeks. Well, tonight I did the regular two squirts and turned my back and heard a "bang". Looked around and the dust cap was bouncing around on the ground :D I don't know what it hit, but it mad a lot of noise.

[Vibe Ray]

I was wondering...is it possible to damage anything by over-greasing any of the zerks on a Lazer HP??? Can it blow a seal or whatever???