greasing the front uj

[doug m]

I'll throw my two cents in as well I use a flex hose & I ground the grease fitting down until I could slide it on the zerk. Getting it back off the zerk once you have pumped it full of grease is another whole bunch of fun~!

i found that cutting a small wooden block, to fit under the bend , works well ,by levering the nozzle off the fitting. i tried the needle nozzle method first, but found that you can't tell if grease is going in or just making amess on the outside. bend and grind, plus wheel off at tire change works well.

[ponti_33609]

EASIEST WAY, (imho) Pull rear wheel, slide off final drive and rear half of driveshaft (and grease it while it's out,), point zerk toward the ground, Grease the zerk using a "needle type grease tip", reassemble. NO messing around with fabb'ing or bending anything, and the tip is at your local hardware place, mine cost under $10.00 and screwed on to my grease gun. Turns out the "hardest" maintenence procedure was a snap...Good Luck with all of yers, S.H.

 

 

 

Actually, I found it easy with the flexible angled connector you buy at Ace Hardware for $10.00 and grind it down with a dremel tool. I DID NOT remove the REAR WHEEL. Just rotate so the fitting is facing up, slide the connector thru the tunnel from the back and snap it on. I found I really needed to grind down the fitting more than I would have thought to get it to go on much easier.

 

Also, once I placed the angled connector over the fitting I used the handle of a screw driver as leverage to pop the connector right on........took me about 2 minutes. Thx to Leafman for his e-mail help with this!

 

Bob

[Chris Kelly]

But the solution's simple - make you own 55 degree attachment. I just took a standard straight attachment, heated it red hot in the fire and bent it.

 

That's pretty clever, but I wonder if it could be done the same way I do it on my Sport 1100i -- with a standard flexible hose and a pair of pliers.

 

1. Remove the flexible hose from the grease gun.

 

2. On the flexible hose, the coupler is made in two halves that screw together. Unscrew the tip about 1/4 - 1/2 turn. This reduces the spring pressure on the on the internal part that clamps onto the nipple.

 

3. Push the coupler onto the grease fitting. It should just drop on.

 

4. Use a pair of pliers to grasp the tip of the coupler (the part you unscrewed), and rotate the flexible hose clockwise. This will screw the two halves of the coupler back together.

 

5. Re-connect the hose to the grease gun. I hold the hose with one hand and use the other to rotate the grease gun to tighten them together.

 

6. Pump grease.

 

7. To remove, give the grease gun a good yank to pull the coupler off the fitting. The hoses seem to be pretty strong and can take it.

[The Monkey]

I bought a case of grease gun attachments just for this task (about adozen options varying degrees swivels etc). The one that ended up working was the 90 degree on a rigid length of tube. Rolled the bike till zerk straight up came at it from forward, bingo job done with no removal of parts! Rigid pipe gave sufficient leverage to engage and remove with no twisting, bumping or any other activity that risks damaging the zerk, (I find them very fragile). My preload spring is dialled to 80 percent of available compression. If your zerk is evading you, hog out the access hole (indent) on the cover (after removal) over the U-joint next tyre change. Only the Italians would engineer an awkward zerk! Incredible.

[sullvarni]

Yep i did the same after reading this forum in what seemed almost torcher to get to the front grease fitting,i bought the ace hardware swiv'eling grease head ground it down a little and sat on the ground facing to the rear with the gun between my legs,a bit of fiddleing to get it on the zerk,did'nt need to remove anything,found it harder to get it off the zerk,ended up useing a long screwdriver and tapped it off with a small hammer,like you said only the Ity's could come up with a boondogle like that,though i do like my LeMans.

 

Stu