U-Joint question

I ran my 2016 for six years with maintenance free u-joints, only one was replaced and that happened in the first two months under warranty.

 

I think I first saw no lube joints in 99 with the Freightliner Century trucks. Those trucks also had no grease fittings on the s cam tubes and slack adjusters either.

My 98 still has the original Spicer SPL Series joints in it. I bought new ones along with carrier bearing awhile back, but they're still tight.

I'll wait till I put new rears in if I can.

I bet the OP's joints are original

 

Those are also self removing to. Very quick and easy to r and r. Just drive them until it spits the shaft out on to the road.

 

They're sealed so no dirt ever gets into them whereas greaseables get a little grit and dirt in there every time they're serviced. In a world where most trucks have AMT's preventing "drivers" from popping wheelies every shift they're kind of a no brainer. Driveline doesn't get beat on so they'll last forever and all the mechanic really has to do is check for play, no money/time spent greasing.

 

I've had both and prefer the heavy duty sealed ones. Greaseable ones fling grease everywhere and are not that fun to grease and wipe clean.

 

Non greaseable ones fit with megas 80,000 mile oil change intervals . Personally I prefer to greae them

 

A greaseable one would probably last longer all else being equal, but meanwhile out in the real world most trucks don’t get greased every 5000-10000 miles. A sealed one will last longer than a neglected serviceable one I think is the general theory. If you’re an owner operator that crawls underneath your truck every other day looking for trouble okay fine, maybe the greaseable ones are better.

 

Maybe for an OO doing there own maintenance, i doubt it in a fleet. One thing about grease zerks, they get dirty, as do grease gun fittings.

How many clean those zerks off before putting the grease gun to them? How much oil dri dust is on the excess grease on the grease gun fitting?

99% don't think about those things. That's the reason I still do all my own work.

 

This is a service I probably overthink too much. I wipe off the zerks, always, but I never brush them and spray off with solvent, so I still no doubt introduce contamination to some degree. I also give a pump and wipe off the gun fitting, but I really think I'm going to put in sealed joints at some point, probably, maybe. I keep a spare SPL250 and SPL170 joint on hand in case a weekend repair, but so far I haven't needed them.

I usually grease mine every other service, or about 20-25k miles and pump until all 4 caps purge, which is usually 15-20 pumps on my old sears hand pumper. Of course even with wiping the excess off the joint, they still sling grease for a few days, which is the biggest reason I'd rather have sealed joints and just change them at 500k. The caps and seals on the SPL line look identical to me, so I question if there's even any benefit to regularly greasing them anyway after the initial fill.

 

I guess I’m over greasing mine, cuz I do mine every 5k with this. It’s my equipment and I have that piece of mind. I do a lot of construction sites.