Zerk fitting replacement?

most the time its hard dryed grease under the zerk that plugs it up, as others mentioned remove the zerk and clean out the hard dry crud with a pick put a new zerk in and then grease it till fresh grease comes out, and don't wait quite so long to grease it again, probably been dry for a long time if the zerk is plugged up.

heat works too, but you have to be carefull with it, many times the bushings in your s cams are a nylon and you wouldn't want to melt the boot on your pitmin arm either. but warming it up can also help re liquify the dried up grease enough to get it to push threw.

 

Now just remember that little ball in a zerk is spring loaded and buy heating it you can build psi behind it. I would say never ever heat one. I know a guy with that ball permanently in the back of his eyeball from heating it. He did not loose his vision long term yet. But it always gonna be in his eye. Shot out like a gun.

 

Yeah guy on plant grease gun pressurised,fitting wouldn't take grease,took gun end off grease nipple,as there called in UK,spring n ball flew out,ball went into hand,ended up in hospital septic

 

I have put penetrating fluid in the hose and pumped the gun to clean out a plugged zerk. It quite ofter works.
No more heatings fittings after reading these posts. Ouch.

 

It's rarely the zerk that is bad. Usually it's whatever needs to be greased that is seized up and preventing the grease from flowing in.

Take out the zerk, blow it out with air and add some penetrating oil. Wait a while.

An air line (with some lite oil in it) or portable hydraulic ram can speed things up if you have the fittings on hand to attach them where the zerk was.

 

Woah Woah
Guys it's only a grease fitting things only get more complicated from here

 

It's not Lupus!

 

I assume this is a used truck and not new. If new, take it back to the dealer and have them fix it.

If used, it could be a problem that has been years in the works. Sometimes just removing the fitting and cleaning it out works, sometimes those things you drive with a hammer works, sometimes heat works, but sometimes you have to disassemble the whole part to clean all that old dry grease out to fix it.

One thing is for sure, it’s not going to get any better until you get the fitting to taking grease.

 

never had luck with that tool,grease comes out of the tool shaft

 

I made a device one time to break fittings free.
I had a small hydraulic cylinder and one of those port-a-power hand pumps. I took one side of the cylinder and filled it with grease, on the other side of the cylinder I attached the hose from the hand pump. I would then attach a hose from the grease packed side of the cylinder to the fitting hole. You'd have to remove the fitting and attach the hose directly into the fitting hole, as the fitting wouldn't hold the pressure. The hand pump was capable of applying 10,000 psi, and would force the grease into the joint.
It worked really well until I finally destroyed the cylinder, because it wasn't rated for 10K psi, but I freed up several stuck fittings before it broke.