Grease Type

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AddisonM30

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I am looking for the best grease to use for smaller equipment. I have a few garden tractors with mower decks, a couple log splitters, a snow blower and some push mowers that I would like to use one grease if possible. I was looking at Amsoil 100% synthetic multipurpose grease but I am open to suggestions.
 
Does your mower deck have ball bearings or tapered roller bearings? If they have sealed on both sides ball bearings I have my doubts greasing them will push debris out. The low cost replacement spindles off ebay seem to be working well and have grease fittings. I often get molybdenum bearing grease maybe because I like the sound of it. John Deere has quite a few choices at the place I visit.
 
Does your mower deck have ball bearings or tapered roller bearings? If they have sealed on both sides ball bearings I have my doubts greasing them will push debris out. The low cost replacement spindles off ebay seem to be working well and have grease fittings. I often get molybdenum bearing grease maybe because I like the sound of it. John Deere has quite a few choices at the place I visit.
You need to be careful about using moly grease in rolling (ball, roller, needle) bearings. It can cause the rolling elements to skid and the moly particles can get squeezed together into bits large enough to interfere with the rolling action. Some greases with a low concentration of moly are OK in rolling bearings, but are then probably not as good for heavy sliding loads, which is where moly is often called for.

From Irving Oil:
AF MOLY is heavy-duty grease for applications where the presence of molybdenum disulfide can be helpful. AF MOLY
contains 3% molybdenum disulfide, which provides dry film lubrication for load-bearing surfaces where the grease may tend
to be squeezed out.
AF MOLY is superior for automotive chassis and construction industry grease. AF MOLY is certified by the NLGI* to its top performance chassis grease rating, LB. Many manufacturers of farm and construction equipment recommend “moly” type
greases for the lubrication of joints, slides, splines, pins, bushings, linkages and hinges.
AF MOLY greases are not the best choice for use in rolling bearings. The particle size of the “moly” has been chosen to be
very small but any particles will cause surface distress in the repetitive loading conditions of rolling bearings. For rolling
bearing applications we recommend using other high quality Irving Lubricant greases such as Lubex EP and Lubex SYN
 
cheap tacky grease is best
spindles need to be filled completely
double sealed is ok since pressure of grease overwhelms any seal
 
Best bet on mower spindles (with grease fittings) is to take them apart and remove the inner seals on the upper and lower bearings and reassemble the spindle and then grease them. I disagree with the premise that pushing grease into a spindle where the bearings have inner seals. All that does is cause the inner seal to get pushed into the race tighter. Remove the inner seals on the upper and lower bearing, grease and be happy and grease them regularly, btw.

My take on grease is, any synthetic tacky grease is good, just not clay based cheap grease because clay based grease will ultimately harden in the bearings and zerks and clog them up. I grease all my equipment, including all my farm tractors and implements with Lucas Red and Tacky/ I use a bulk air greaser with 130 pound open head grease drums.
 
Not opinions on either point.
Care to provide a substantiating link then? If not, it's your opinion only...

Far as the seal lips folding over at 20 psi pressure, I don't buy that either. The grease seals on a sealed bearing in a mower spindle are much thicker and more rigid than that and that comes from first hand experience on my part. In fact, I remove the inner grease seals on spindle bearings so the grease can get into the bearings, something I always do, least on my wife's mower, Of course that don't apply to my Kubota diesel mower's front mount deck...

When the spindles are assembled it's sop to install sealed bearings when in reality you only want the bearing to be sealed (from dirt ingress) on the outer side, not the inner side where you can force grease under pressure into the bearing and keep in lubricated.

That is a non issue on my Kubota diesel F series mower because Kubota actually uses non shielded bearings in their mower spindles that have grease fittings installed from the factory on the lower bearings and the uppers run in an oil bath which is in this case not germane. What is germane is your statement about the Mobil grease to which I want a link supporting your statement and your comment about the seal lips deflecting at 20 psi is hogwash as well.

Removing the inner seals on a spindle to allow grease into the bearing is well documented with many YT video's depicting that procedure.
 
If it makes ya'll feel better, take the inner seals out. They are single lip types and 20 psi will fold the lips into the inner race/cage area.

One important thing is to fill the spindle cavity with grease. This takes about an entire 10 oz. tube each.

Mobil1 red is very water happy and is junk in moist conditions.
Moly grease seems ok, but overkill in this application.
 
Again, your opinion with no substantiation or link which relegates it to opinion only with no real world proof. Having said that I don't use Mobil grease anyway, I use Lubrication Engineers Synthetic Teflon fortified grease and I buy it in 130 pound open head drums as I have an air operated grease pump that I also fill my lever guns with.

Finally I don't buy your comment about grease seals on sealed bearings because those seals are rigid and not lip seals in the first place. Those rigid seals are pressed into place in the outer shell of the bearing, there is no 'lip' at all. Just a synthetic rubber ring that eliminates and ingress of foreign material and grease as well from entering the bearing and removing it (inner seal, not outer) allows the grease to easily enter the inner race and lubricate it.

Feeling better has no bearing on my comment at all.
 
For most of us, any grease will do*, however, we should really keep an eye on what is in the grease. On another forum, this topic came up, and one smart guy pointed out that some greases are incompatible with others - using the wrong grease could cause both the old and new to liquefy and flow out of the bearing. This came up because the poster in that other discussion was exploring expensive, extreme pressure greases for a general application type - the exotic stuff was not needed.

Here are two discussions that support what I'm saying:
https://www.machinerylubrication.com/Read/1865/grease-compatibility

https://www.thelubricantstore.com/grease-compatibility-chart

Bottom line is the importance of staying with the same basic type of grease that was originally used. Consistency is all. Greases are a lot like oils - the brand is not as important as regular application.

*I say this because most of us will blanch at spending $25 for a tube of exotic grease and buy a different brand of common chassis or wheel bearing grease. The thinking "if it costs that much it must be better than what's in the bearing" ain't necessarily so.
 
I do use a very specialized grease to lubricate the roller noses on my chainsaw bars and it retails for about 25 bucks a tube but I don't use a lot as I remove from the tube what will fill my needle grease gun (which gas a small reservoir anyway). The grease I do use is specifically formulated for high shear resistance and formulated to stay put when exposed to high centrifugal force. Like I said, a tube goes a long way because I don't use very much very often.

Because I'm lubricating ground engaging farm equipment mostly, why I use LE synthetic grease mostly. It has an extremely high resistance to coming off in ground engaging uses plus it a full synthetic so no worries about clogging grease fittings or hardening in lubricated joints like a clay based grease will. In fact, over the literally hundreds of grease fitting I lubricate often, I've never had a clogged Alemite fitting ever and unlike clay based grease, excess grease surround an greased joint is easy to remove.
 
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