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best grease?

JHESL

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Sep 1, 2011
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Cayman Islands
I am currently using the Valvoline with moly and we've tried other brands, like the Texaco moly and Top 5. They all seem to be a decent grease, but it seems to pound out of the pins of my excavator (Deere 800) quite easily. We're digging blasted shot rock in 30+ feet of salt water with a heavy tool package (8' stick extension and a 60", 5 cy bucket) so we needed something that could stand up to those conditions. Of course we grease the machine every day, but it doesn't take long for a machine with that weight and power to squish the grease right out of the bushings.
I recently tried some Green Dot High Impact grease from Chemtron and it is pretty impressive. It is for high impact applications and is highly water resistant, which is what we need. It is visibly thicker, and strands like chewing gum. We used a couple of tubes in the bucket pins, and after a day of hard digging, hardly any of it had pounded out of the bushings. It's quite expensive, but when you consider the importance of lubrication, especially in heavy underwater digging, its worth it IMV. I have now ordered 4 buckets of the stuff and will report back soon on the results.

Here's a link to the spec sheet:
http://www.chemtron.com/uploads/products/tech/CT-705-GREEN-DOT-SUPER-IMPACT-GREASE--TDS.pdf
 
Last edited:

daman

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Bad Axe,MI
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Agriculture,Truck Driver,Mechanic
If your getting pound out you need a better thickener base grease then just lithium,the moly is great and what you want but one also needs a good thickener to "stay put",check my above post for more info.
 

JHESL

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Cayman Islands
Thanks. You daman! I have been looking at that Amsoil Off-Road Grease as well.
According to the Amsoil website a 35lb pail is $304.95. Chemtron just quoted me $396 for a 45lb pail, so they are about comparable price-wise ($8.71 per lb vs. $8.8 per lb)
 

daman

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Bad Axe,MI
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Agriculture,Truck Driver,Mechanic
The Ams is good yes but i prefer the 238's thickener over the ams calcium complex. 238 is a great grease and perfect for this type plication,less greasing involved because the grease stays put.

you use tubes or you bulk fill your guns???
 

JHESL

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Sep 1, 2011
Messages
79
Location
Cayman Islands
The Ams is good yes but i prefer the 238's thickener over the ams calcium complex. 238 is a great grease and perfect for this type plication,less greasing involved because the grease stays put.

you use tubes or you bulk fill your guns???

Thanks. My machine came with an electric (24 volt) Grease pump that sits on a 5 gal pail with a retractable hose reel, so that's what we use, although it can be a PITA to get it primed sometimes when the bucket gets below the half-way mark.
We used a hand pump for the green grease, since a friend of mine gave me a couple of tubes to try. To be honest, that Green Dot stuff is so thick, I'm not sure if the electric grease pump can actually pump it!
 

daman

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Mar 22, 2010
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237
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Bad Axe,MI
Occupation
Agriculture,Truck Driver,Mechanic
To be honest that sounds like a PITA to use when your crawling around up and down etc,IMO I'd switch over to tubes with a good quality lever or pistol grip action, but just MO.

i use Lincoln guns very high quality easily primed and shove 500+ tubes a year through them no complaints.
 

Nige

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Another very good grease is the Lubriplate extreme pressure 1200-2, it seems to stay in place longer, especially in pins, bushings, turntables, and bucket pins.
I'm not going to knock a grease that you have obviously used & that I have no experience of, but on paper it's only a hair better than a standard multi-purpose grease - 360kg 4-Ball weld test versus 315kg for a normal multi-purpose grease. OK for general use but I wouldn't use it on heavily loaded pin/bush joints TBH.
 

Nige

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I am currently using the Valvoline with moly and we've tried other brands, like the Texaco moly and Top 5. They all seem to be a decent grease, but it seems to pound out of the pins of my excavator (Deere 800) quite easily. We're digging blasted shot rock in 30+ feet of salt water with a heavy tool package (8' stick extension and a 60", 5 cy bucket) so we needed something that could stand up to those conditions. Of course we grease the machine every day, but it doesn't take long for a machine with that weight and power to squish the grease right out of the bushings.
I recently tried some Green Dot High Impact grease from Chemtron and it is pretty impressive. It is for high impact applications and is highly water resistant, which is what we need. It is visibly thicker, and strands like chewing gum. We used a couple of tubes in the bucket pins, and after a day of hard digging, hardly any of it had pounded out of the bushings. It's quite expensive, but when you consider the importance of lubrication, especially in heavy underwater digging, its worth it IMV. I have now ordered 4 buckets of the stuff and will report back soon on the results.

Here's a link to the spec sheet:
http://www.chemtron.com/uploads/products/tech/CT-705-GREEN-DOT-SUPER-IMPACT-GREASE--TDS.pdf
Can you ask Chemtron what is the 4-Ball Weld Test result and what viscosity is the base oil that they use to manufacture it please. Their spec sheet does not show it. In fact the spec sheet is short on all sorts of other information also, which always gets me twitchy. The Chemtron grease is an NLGI #2.5 (a very unusual spec) which is probably why it appears so thick. Usually the heaviest grease available is NLGI #2.
 

JHESL

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Cayman Islands
Can you ask Chemtron what is the 4-Ball Weld Test result and what viscosity is the base oil that they use to manufacture it please. Their spec sheet does not show it. In fact the spec sheet is short on all sorts of other information also, which always gets me twitchy. The Chemtron grease is an NLGI #2.5 (a very unusual spec) which is probably why it appears so thick. Usually the heaviest grease available is NLGI #2.

Thanks man. I will ask the Chemtron rep for a full spec sheet. It is definitely thicker and strands like gum when you try to separate it, but it would be good to know whether it has the lubrication/load qualities that it needs for heavy digging. I will report back with what they say.
 

Nige

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Give this a shot, its about 1300 bucks a barrel. I dont know how much a pail would be.

http://www.belray.com/sites/default/files/pds_files/Bel-Ray Molylube SP Lubricant PDS.pdf
Check out this comment on Page 8 ..............

I was a big fan of synthetics many years back when it was impossible to get a mineral-based grease with 4-ball numbers of 600kg and above and for it still be pumpable in temperatures well below freezing. Bel-Ray Molylube SP-4 was my favourite and it is still an excellent grease today, if a tad expensive.

A question though. How many people deciding to try Bel-Ray Molylube SP4 would know right off the bat whether they needed an NLGI #0, #1, or #2 grease they would need for their local climatic conditions. Furthermore if they decided they needed NLGI #0 then which of the 4 options of base oil viscosity (46, 100, 150, or 200) would they need ..?
 

Nige

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As a general rule moly grease is not good for rolling element bearings, so that would rule out turntables. Hitachi have flatly refused to let us use this type of grease in the swing on their machines, I have no idea about other manufacturers. Moly is really just an additive commonly used as a friction reducer, rolling element bearings are by definition low friction anyway. Where moly helps out as an additive is reducing friction in heavily-loaded pin/bush joints.
 

Canadian_digger

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Will a Moly grease harm turntable bearings in excavators?

I would like to switch with moly but am afraid one of the guys could forget or make a mistake and pump moly into the turntable bearing. If it would not harm anything then I would go for the switch.

What do you guys think.
 

thabull

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lorida florida
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look up superlube brand grease and look at test results! ( its the grease with PTFE(teflon) in it) the test was a bolt and nut in some type of vise that put 4000 lbs of pressure on it, then they would count how many turns it would turn before it galded,(they stopped the test at 1000 turns w/ no galding) Im pretty sure the bolt and nut with the 2nd best grease only turned 6 turns.I bought a case of it online 12 tubes for $60. Im in the process of buying some PTFE powder from a company called Shamrock and I will mix it with grease but I cant mix it with oil,they said Id have to get their concentrated mineral oil,cause you could never mix it enough to get it to stay.Yall know that PTFE is what was in SLICK 50(by the way slick50 dont use it anymore ?) Superlube also has PTFE in a penatrating spray,you should try that on a sliding glass door track unbelievable! Im sold on it! If anyone has any more helpful info on PTFE please let everyone know about it.
 

Nige

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look up superlube brand grease and look at test results! ( its the grease with PTFE(teflon) in it) the test was a bolt and nut in some type of vise that put 4000 lbs of pressure on it, then they would count how many turns it would turn before it galded,(they stopped the test at 1000 turns w/ no galding) Im pretty sure the bolt and nut with the 2nd best grease only turned 6 turns.I bought a case of it online 12 tubes for $60. Im in the process of buying some PTFE powder from a company called Shamrock and I will mix it with grease but I cant mix it with oil,they said Id have to get their concentrated mineral oil,cause you could never mix it enough to get it to stay.Yall know that PTFE is what was in SLICK 50(by the way slick50 dont use it anymore ?) Superlube also has PTFE in a penatrating spray,you should try that on a sliding glass door track unbelievable! Im sold on it! If anyone has any more helpful info on PTFE please let everyone know about it.
More tests developed by lubricant suppliers to "prove" that their product is the best. IMHO the ONLY test results you should be looking at in considering a grease are industry-standard ASTM tests. All the rest are just so much horse crap.
 

daman

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Bad Axe,MI
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Agriculture,Truck Driver,Mechanic
I would like to switch with moly but am afraid one of the guys could forget or make a mistake and pump moly into the turntable bearing. If it would not harm anything then I would go for the switch.

What do you guys think.
A normal lithium base thickener #2 moly grease in slow moving bearings will hurt nothing we do it all the time in slow moving implement bearings here,it's in high speed bearings with a aluminum,or calcium complex thickener that could cause bearing skip because it has extra tackifyers and thicker base grease.

not sure on the type of set up a excavator turn table has but i highly,highly doubt it would cause any harm.
 

daman

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I understand that but i still stand by my post so the poster has a choice to make,you should ask Hitachi exactly why a 3%lithium grease cant be used, get a better in depth(if they can) explanation from them.
 

Nige

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We did ask. They provided a letter from the supplier of their slewing bearings (NTN if I recall correctly) stating that friction-reducing additives such as moly were not permitted in the grease used to lubricate said slewing rings because they had past experience of rollers "skdding" and wearing flat spots. In truth a cross-roll slewing ring is already a low-friction design (as are all roller bearings TBH) and therefore should not require additional friction reducers in the grease.

With a new slewing ring for one of our shovels close to 100 grand and probably on a 6 month delivery time we figured it would be better to follow their recommendations, especially while the machines were under warranty.

The reason all this came up was that we wanted to use a moly grease in the pins in the front end linkage of our Hitachis for obvious reasons, but the machines have automatic lubrication (including the slewing ring) all fed from a single grease tank and a single grease pump. What we ended up doing was to manufacture our own tanks with 2 compartments each one with its own pump. The central lube system was split and now one tank contains a lithium-base NLGI #2 non-moly grease and supplies only the slewing ring, the other compartment has a high-quality 800kg+ NLGI #1 5% moly grease in it. As a result pin galling on the front end of the machine has reduced almost to zero. We haven't done a pin in months.
 
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