Grease gun injector needle for sealed balljoints.

Status
Not open for further replies.
Joined
Oct 4, 2007
Messages
1,606
Location
Oahu, Hawaii
Is it possible to use a grease gun needle to pierce the rubber seal to grease ball joints? It does not have fittings as it's a 2wd truck.

My lower ball joints on my truck is leaking grease and I'm worried that it might fail. I might change the ball joints w/ grease fittings as a preventative maintainance, but with the lack of funds, I was thinking of greasing them to get more life out of them.
 
You are just causing a problem by doing it that way but since you have a failing issue already as a temp fix to get you through till replacement go ahead.
 
In my experience, aftermarket suspension parts don't last nearly as long at OEM parts. So as long as your ball joints aren't loose, I wouldn't recommend replacement. Replacing them before they fail would likely be doing your vehicle a disservice.
 
don't bother with the needle greasing. I did that and it didn't really help anything, as the grease needs to be in the "ball and cup" area to be useful. Since your only greasing around the shaft, your not really doing anything but wasting your time.


Just wait till they fail then get some greasable ones.
 
As others mentioned forget using the needle to grease them, it won't work well. If you do it you popped a hole in the boot which will eventually open up more allowing dirt etc in and ruin the joint faster. If/when the joint fails replace it with a quality part that has a zerk fitting.
 
I have drilled and tapped the BOTTOM of the fitting for a grease fitting, but I don't consider that a good idea, in general.
Sealed joints seem to work fine if they are not torn or leaking.
 
Yes, I've done that a couple of times, too- in situations where the boot was torn but I didn't want to replace the part. Kindof a pain, and you have to take precautions to minimize any metal debris getting into the ball joint- but it worked well enough.

Also, for what it's worth, the boots on my '94 Corsica's ball joints have been torn for the last 9 years (about 90k at the time). I grease them maybe twice a year, and at 175,000 miles, there's still no visible play in them. So I don't think that a torn boot is necessarily a big deal.
 
I have greased sealed balljoints with a needle but not by peircing. Take the extra step and pop the balljoint off and insert the needle between the shaft and boot. I stopped the squeaking on my 1997 F150. The balljoints & tie rods were tight, just squeakig. That was around 120,000 miles. The Truck now has 200,000 miles. Keep in mind you have to work the grease in. Had there been any amount of play or loose feel, I would have replace them in a heartbeat. The Ford 1/2 tons were known to have squeaky balljoints as they must have gone skimpy on the grease.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top