U joint failure

Before trucking i worked at a driveline shop for years... If you over grease you will blow out the seals which will cause premature failure...

 

I do it myself. Most of the time T/a monkey misses half of the zerk fittings and usually my tire have more grease on them than king pins

 

Yup if you push grease out of the seals then it loosens up the seals and flings the grease out.

 

I don't buy that. When I grease mine I always push just a very little out the seals. Never had a failure and my u-joints have at least 600,000 miles on them if not more.

 

Same here. I'll grease them until I see just a little bit trickle out of each trunnion end. That way I know there is lubrication at each cap.

 

I grease every week.

My belief is that the ones that have U-joint failures after pushing grease out the seals are the ones that don't grease often enough. If you let it go way too long, then grease the crap out of it, then let it go way too long again, I can see it losing enough grease to wear out.

I grease 'em till it comes out. Same with steering components with rubber seals. I just grease 'em often and (knock on wood) haven't had trouble.

 

Tie rod and drag link ends I usually grease until I see the rubber boot start to swell.

 

my last 3 trucks had greaseless Meritor u-joints and they went more than 1m mile except one (750000m). replaced with same u-joints and was happy.

 

I had greaseless in my pickup truck they came in it from the factory. Around 60,000 miles one of them failed. Just so happened we were coming off vacation in the middle of a 700 mile drive home. I drove about 300 miles home like that never getting over 50mph.

 

I just traded off a pickup with non-servicable u-joints. Over 300,000km on them and they were tight as new.