Who hid the zerks?

pharmer

pharmer

Member
Bronze Supporter
Joined
Mar 22, 2002
Messages
9,546
Reaction score
16,066
Location
28 N, 81W
I serviced my truck (2010 Chevy Silverado WT 4.3) today. Oil change air filter etc. Got out the grease gun and there ain't no zerks. Or they hid them so only "Mr Goodwretch" knows where they are. Figured I'd ask here cause when I asked my wife she had that "I see your lips moving but how does my hair look?" look. I was already mad that the drain plug went from SAE to 13mm so my pre-war open ends (which have been servicing cars in my family for 4 generations) didn't fit. Oh and I learned that rotating tires is for a younger man. Joe
 
Register to hide this ad
Most don't have them any more. Which I don't like..
Most all the front end parts these days have "lifetime"
lube and can't be greased. There is usually not even a
hole and plug for zerk fittings. So my car, there is nothing
to grease on the whole car. Where as my old trucks have a
load of them.
 
No zerks. They've been gone for a long time, although Ford would have been wise to include them if they're going to use ball joints made of material having roughly the same strength as dirt.
 
Zerks went the way of distributor points. They are gone. On your older trucks/cars if you greased everytime you changed oil, steering might last a very longtime. I think that is why Ford got rid of their twin I beam. It almost lasted forever. The modern way, things are factory sealed and you can look forward to replacing steering joints after a few years.
 
My wife drives a 92 Toyota 4WD. None of the parts that I have had to replace, like tie rod ends and such, had grease fittings. The replacement parts came greased, with a plug in the end, and a fitting in the bag.
My 02 S-10 has fittings everywhere except on the U-joints but does have the plugs where you can install them. I love my S-10!
Peace,
gordon
 
A few days ago I had a front wheel bearing go out on my wifes 2001 silverado at 88K miles. A sealed unit, think that cost around $315s.
 
Did you know that if you asked almost anyone what a zerk was you would get a blank face.:confused: Hardly anyone knows what they are.

BTW, my 99-1/2 F350 has em, not many but some where it counts. I think anyway, maybe not.

Joe
 
feralmerril,
When I bought my S-10, I couldn't hardly believe it when I read where you are supposed to clean, inspect and repack the front wheel bearings every 30K. It is a 2WD. My wifes Toyota 4WD recommends you do it every 40K. I used to own vehicles that I never did repack unless the brakes got replaced or one went out.
Peace,
gordon
 
Oh yeah, lifetime lubed my foot! They mean the lifetime of the part not the vehicle. Zerk fittings, oh man I remember when I was a pup and my Dad handed me a grease gun and told to me to lube all the zerk fittings.
 
GTsmith, when I went to pick the truck up I told the manager to do just that. He said, cant, it`s a sealed unit!
 
My first acquaintance with a grease gun was to be handed one as I was standing in front of an old combine. There must have been a couple hundred, or so it seemed.

It still seems unnatural not to have many to do. But we had an '87 Toyota p/u that my daughter got at 187K with no zerks in the steering linkage. We ran it another 100K and it was still a whole lot tighter than some of Detroit's finest. Darned if I know how they did it.
 
yup no lube points anymore but what gets me is i see shops and oil change places offer lube jobs with oil changes. basically all you're getting is an overpriced oil change because there is no lube involved in their "package" deal.
just another way to get more money from the consumer while offering less service.
i still change my own oil btw.
 
After the "lifetime lubed" joints start making noise in 60K or so miles, I replace the offending parts with MOOG parts made of better stuff and zerks included, and then they last another 150K to 200K miles until I get rid of the truck.

Leaving out the zerks is a total rip-off, which started with the bragging about how little scheduled maintenance there was for a vehicle, and lower the inital cost slightly.

I agree with the comment about using cheap suspension parts in new trucks to lower the cost a couple hundred. Then you get to spend $800 putting in what they used to come with.
 
There was a lot of premature part wear from improperly greased suspension parts though. The grease was not supposed to flow OUT of the rubber boot. When that happened it meant someone had blown the watertight seal.
 
Bat Guano said:
My first acquaintance with a grease gun was to be handed one as I was standing in front of an old combine. There must have been a couple hundred, or so it seemed.
Click to expand...

I remember those days! When you got really good at it, you could do your daily greasing in the time it took the slow, electric diesel pump in the pickup to fill the tank on the combine. But there were twice as many more we were supposed to do weekly. :(

Most of the new big trucks are coming out with no zerks, too. I grease mine every 5k miles. If I forget and let it go to 10k, I can "feel" that it needs grease. Our engines are designed to go for 1,000,000 miles, but our drivelines and suspensions are only good for 50k?!?
 
Question: Do manufactors purposely design stuff to quit after so many miles when they as easily and maybe even cheaper make things last longer with the idea of giveing their dealers maintaniance work?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Latest posts

Back
Top