U joint failure

If you plan on trading your truck in every 350,000 miles like a mega fleet, by all means keep doing 25,000 intervals. Otherwise 10,000 mile grease intervals is still pretty far for an owner operator. Grease is cheap, and it'll keep kingpins, slack adjusters, cam bushings, ujoints, 5th wheel, etc lasting a long time.

You know you've used enough grease when clean new grease is oozing out of all 4 ends of the ujoint.


The only exceptions are the clutch & s-cam bushings -- a couple pumps of grease will do ya (you don't want excess grease getting on the brake or clutch linings)

BTW, you should catch bad ujoints on detailed pretrips (the types I'd do maybe once a week). Here is Connecticut DOT's driveline inspection procedure: http://www.ct.gov/dmv/lib/dmv/cv_bu...e-driveshaft-inspections-created-04-01-14.pdf

 

Grease every 5,000 miles period. It's cheap protection and only takes 30 mins tops. Make sure grease comes out at all 4 corners. If it doesn't, grease isn't getting to that side. I know some guys that grease ever weekend or every other weekend no matter the miles.

As far as being towed, they should always remove the drive shaft. Otherwise you risk tranny or rear end problems. When they pick up the front of the truck, it throws the drive line angles out.

 

Grease is the cheapest mechanic you will never find. Just do it once a month for peace of mind.

 

Get greaseless joints.

 

We grease ours every weekend religiously. Just replaced the first ujoint on a 2002 FLD with 1.4 million.

 

Another important practice often not followed by "techs" at Speedco or T/A-Petro shop is to ALWAYS wipe the grit and dirt off the grease fitting before you hook the grease gun onto it. Otherwise you're just pushing that grit into those bearing surfaces. I've never seen anyone in a shop use a rag to clean off the grease zerks before they grease. Which is very sloppy and pure laziness. I grease my truck every 6,000 miles except for the throw out bearing which gets about a 1/4 of a shot every 12,000 miles. U-joints should last at least 750,000 miles or more. But like double yellow says they certainly won't if you're greasing them every 25,000 miles.

 

I never had that experience. They always cleaned the zerk beforehand but I just prefer to do it myself. It's an every weekend job and just kind of a ritual I got into years ago.

 

Agreed. I have sealed ujoints. No grease. Just replaced mine a couple months back.

As for greasing the truck. My truck and trailer see grease every week. Also gets done again every 10k - 12k miles with each oil change.

I couldnt imagine letting it go 25k or I've even been told some go 50k before oil change and pm service.

Hurst

 

Greased dad's trucks 2x a week. Never had any failures and everything lasted pretty much the life of the truck.