Rear Arm Nipple
Moderator: RichardW
Rear Arm Nipple
I seem to remember some guy (walter? wethers? wonderboy?) on this forum some time ago giving very detailed instructions about how to drill and fit grease nipples on the rear suspension arms of Cits. IIRC he suggested heavy oil rather than grease and drills/taps of specific sizes. Anyone remember this? Where is it?
I've done this to my car & know plenty others who have also.
It must be understood that this really does very little as regards actaully lubricating the bearing as they are sealed for starters & have spacers & all kinds of things in there that will restrict the grease from getting too far into the bearing anyway but the idea of this is to keep the cavity from filling with water & thereby having the water contaminate the grease already in the bearing. Also just through normal operation, there is a certain amount of friction heat generated and using this system, when the bearing cools, instead of sucking water or whatever in, it sucks in grease if anything at all looks like getting in there.
A recent report of a BX doing 900,000 miles mentioned that this system was also used so the proof of its ability to work is obviously there.
Pleiades do a conversion to oil but I understand it is a somewhat expensive affair & given the price of BXs in the UK I could not see being practical these days.
Alan S
http://www.aussiefrogs.com/snippets/grease.htm
It must be understood that this really does very little as regards actaully lubricating the bearing as they are sealed for starters & have spacers & all kinds of things in there that will restrict the grease from getting too far into the bearing anyway but the idea of this is to keep the cavity from filling with water & thereby having the water contaminate the grease already in the bearing. Also just through normal operation, there is a certain amount of friction heat generated and using this system, when the bearing cools, instead of sucking water or whatever in, it sucks in grease if anything at all looks like getting in there.
A recent report of a BX doing 900,000 miles mentioned that this system was also used so the proof of its ability to work is obviously there.
Pleiades do a conversion to oil but I understand it is a somewhat expensive affair & given the price of BXs in the UK I could not see being practical these days.
Alan S
http://www.aussiefrogs.com/snippets/grease.htm
I haven't followed the Aussiefrogs link and at the risk of duplicating what is there I will just mention what seemed to be a useful hint.
The rear arms are hollow and will take some filling with grease. I saw somewhere recently the hint of filling the cavity with insulation foam and just leaving the area around the bearings for the grease.
jeremy
The rear arms are hollow and will take some filling with grease. I saw somewhere recently the hint of filling the cavity with insulation foam and just leaving the area around the bearings for the grease.
jeremy
I think most of the building foams on the market are non-absorbent (closed cell or something). Certainly when i have used them there has been no problem. I agree that to look at them they look like sponge but they are sold for crack filling etc and filling up with water would render them unsuitable for many applications.
Jeremy
Jeremy
Jeremy,
The only risk I can see is that with the weather conditions you guys get over there, becoming impregnated with moisture is a distinct possibility. The reason being that the building foam is very similar to that used in refrigeration, in fact it goes without saying that the refrigeration stuff would be a higher quality & should be even more water resistent, however almost every fridge I ever disembowelled was swimming in water in the insulation, and freezers you could almost pump the stuff out of them.
As I say, with the grease, the initial fill is the worst, but after that a once a year, or in our case once a wet season, to just give them a couple of pumps usually sees the water dripping out of the arms.
Alan S
The only risk I can see is that with the weather conditions you guys get over there, becoming impregnated with moisture is a distinct possibility. The reason being that the building foam is very similar to that used in refrigeration, in fact it goes without saying that the refrigeration stuff would be a higher quality & should be even more water resistent, however almost every fridge I ever disembowelled was swimming in water in the insulation, and freezers you could almost pump the stuff out of them.
As I say, with the grease, the initial fill is the worst, but after that a once a year, or in our case once a wet season, to just give them a couple of pumps usually sees the water dripping out of the arms.
Alan S