How many Varieties of Grease.

[durallymax]

Working on organizing my lube station at the farm and getting online to order som more grease guns since most of ours are gone/broken.

Got me thinking of how many varieties of grease We need.

Aside from a good lithium EP2 (i was thinking about chevron delo, but its tough to get so IDK) what else is needed?

We are a large dairy farm, primarily greasing equipment, chassis, bearings, wheel bearings, motors, and a few other things.

Do I need some grease with moly as well.

I know I'll have on setup with "corn head" grease.

I know I could go look through every manual to see what they want, but figured I'd see what other large shops are doing.

Im looking at having a pistol grip gun with whip hose setup with each different type of grease, then with the refill tubes below it.

For the general EP2 grease that will get used most I'll have a lever gun as well, along with a lever gun with top straight hard discharge, and the electric gun as well. This covers everybodys bases. I prefer the lever gun and for the most used grease we can justify having both, but for the other greases the pistol grip is a little more universal incase you need to hold the fitting on the nipple. The hard pipe discharges are much nicer for doing booms and things out in the open versus a hose.

We already have an alemite electric gun, the other guns I was looking at were from Alemite or Lincoln for the hand ones, although the clear ones at the top of this section look nice.

I was thinking about doing a keg for the most used stuff, but IDK.

For grease brands I have ready access to anything NAPA carries as well as Citgo and Mobil. Others like Chevron and Mystik I could get but it would take a little extra work.

Thanks for any input.

 

[santiago]

Durallymax,

Are you required to use an USDA approved grease on your dairy equipment? If so you could probably get by with two additional types. One for wheel bearings, motors, bearings etc. and another for chassis and suspension components.

 

[durallymax]

Revisiting this a bit.

We are currently using NAPA's EP2 Lithium Complex chassis grease. Its not expensive, and it works, but it isn't very tacky.

The oil supplier we are going through now, recommended Citgo's Grease of the same variety but with 3% Moly.

Forgive me as I have not taken much time to do the research. It makes sense that more people would like it and that it would stick better due to the Moly, but is there a time when I would not want the Moly? I kind of take their advice with a grain of salt. I like to manage things by finding the best product for the money for the application but tend to favor towards using higher quality products. They gear towards cheap and works. Its simple, its a good motto that a lot of people like. I just like to know a lot more than that. They don't like most of my ideas about how I wanted to set up our bulk dispensing system, or how I wanted to deal with the DEF, but it was mostly because they wanted to keep it simple and cheap.

I was going to stop by another Oil distributor that is a Chevron dealer to get some Delo 400 LE to try in a couple of our machines that run a lot to see if the Delo holds up better. I was going to grab some Delo EP2 grease, but noticed they also have an HD version that has Moly added. Should I grab that instead?

The areas I have troubles keeping grease in are pins on loaders and skid steers. Just seems like there would be room for improvement.


If you want to direct me to another thread or website that is fine. Just wondering what the ups and downs of Moly grease are and if there are places I will want to avoid using it. Thanks.

 

[Rob_Roy]

For anything that is used to handle manure, dirt, or is exposed to water, you would be much happier with a grease that uses a calcium or aluminum complex based thickener. Lithium complex greases are fine for light duty applications, but in my opinion they are very poor for most applications on a farm. We had a 1000 acre farm with many different types of equipment, and we cut our grease consumption in half and practically eliminated bearing failures by switching to a premium grease.

My grease of choice is 880 Crown and Chassis by Texas Refinery, but I have also used Schaeffer's #221 grease with good results. Either one will be leaps and bounds above the products you are currently using.

 

[salesrep]

I would agree with much of what RobRoy has said...and yes provided you do not need any food grade nsf greases you can use one good grease for all your applications, many dairy farmers do.
Grease is the combination of thickener, base oil,additives and the percentage of each. Moly plates up on the metal "stickiness" has to do with Tactifiers and the thickener ie aluminum complex.

 

[durallymax]

I looked into the 880. Used TRC stuff before with good results.

One thing i notice was they reccommended for over 270* to use something else. I do not know what bearing temps get up to on our equipment really. The only one I know is the chopper's processeor which has a real time monitor in the cab, but those sit in an oil mister.

 

[battyice]

It would be unusual to find an application on farm equipment that exceeds 250 degrees.

Processor and blower bearings are a tough application, hot or not. We had excellent luck with the 880 in the kernel processor bearings on a JD 6910. Personally I think the water/acid from the corn juice is more of a problem than the heat.

 

[durallymax]

Okay good to know thanks.

We run an aftermarket Scherer HP processor in our Claas. The Bearings sit in pressurized housings and get an oil mist to keep them cool with felt seals the weep slightly. No contamination ever gets in them and they stay very cool.

 

[durallymax]

Met with the rep from the company that is the Chevron distributor yesterday.

From what I am seeing I am fairly confident I will be switching us over to this company and the Chevron line of fluids. Much nicer company to deal with and better more consistent product that I have a little more faith in.

Anyways, to keep it short and sweet. I found the specs sheets on the TRC 880, Delo EP2 and Valvoline Red Lithium EP2. The latter I suspect is close to our NAPA grease but I cannot confirm. The napa grease is not red, it is a vaseline color. I cannot find a spec sheet anywhere other than an MSDS.

The two I am interested in are obviously the Delo and TRC 880. I was wondering if someone with more knowledge than myself had a minute to sift through a compare the two. It seems each has their advantage in their own areas, but I cannot rank the importance of those for my application due to not having much knowledge on the issue. It appears the TRC 880 has a higher load rating and better washout resistance however the Delo simply seems like its advantage is in higher heat applications. The Spec sheet for the TRC didn't have many test to compare the rust inhibiting but the Delo sheet has a lot of tests on it. It seems to relate more to sea water applications though. I could be wrong.

The next question. Will the TRC 880 be compatible with the grease in my machines now, or will I want to make sure I pump as much of it out as I can?

Costs. Does anyone have an approximate cost on the TRC 880? I have a rough cost of the Delo and will have a firm price next week on it. Then the question would be, is the TRC 880, if priced higher, worth the extra money and hassle. Or is there a Chevron product with the specs that you prefer. I see they offer a lot of greases outside of the Delo line. I would be sticking to 14oz tubes for now.

Then on the question of Moly with the Delo. Is there any reason I would want the Moly over the stuff without?

Thanks again.

Delo

http://www.chevronlubricants.com/docs/DeloHeavyDutyGreases_US_v10.pdf

TRC 880

http://www.texasrefinery.com/images/lb-880crown&chassis.pdf

Valvoline

http://www.valvoline.com/pdf/hd_crimson_grease.pdf

 

[Rob_Roy]

The Delo EP grease is a good product, and I would choose it over the Vavoline Crimson grease...but the only edge it has over the TRC 880 grease is operating temperature, and I have yet to see an agricultural application that exceeded the operating range of 880.

Wet applications or anything with shock loads are usually where the common lithium complex greases fall short. Examples of each would be: Manure pump bearings, manure spreader, bucket pins on skidsteer used to clean barn, loader pins, etc.

50 tubes of TRC 880 is right around $300, I am not sure on the other two greases.

 

[Rob_Roy]

Almost forgot your question about moly. In my opinion, moly is most beneficial in applications where the grease may get squeezed or knocked out, like the bucket pins on a loader or an excavator bucket.

There shouldn't be an issue with compatibility with any of the greases you have mentioned.

 

[durallymax]

Thats a couple dollars higher per tube but for those applications would probably be worth it. All of our manure pumps are oil bath and use the grease for the seal.

 

[Rob_Roy]

Many people see a marked decrease in annual grease consumption when they switch to something that "stays put".

One bearing failure on the wrong day can cost enough in downtime to buy you years worth of grease.

 

[durallymax]

Im aware of the potential savings with a grease that will need to be used less.We currently pay just over $3 for the Napa product but it is a pretty poor grease for our applications. The Delo is a little over $4. Your price shows $6 for TRC.

I would say a good 50% of our annual hrease use or more goes into applications like loader pins. 7 skid steers and the wheel loader takr the majority of thr annual grease.

I think I might order a big case or TRC 880 and try it out. Ill get some delo too. We have two skid steers that are identical and take about the same amount of grease each week. I may run the two products side by side and monitor them.

 

[durallymax]

Revisiting this again somewhat. I had chatted with Rob_Roy outside this thread a bit.

We are in the process of switching to the Chevron dealer, figuring out all of the new equipment now. Very nice to deal with, going to have a killer lube dispensing setup when done, much better to deal with.

We were out of our other greases so I got a case of the Delo HD EP2 which I had the price wrong on, $3.53/tube. Its been a much better grease than the Napa we had so far.

However I still would like to try the TRC stuff for our loader pins.

I was thinking about trying the TRC880 with moly for use in all of our pins and bushings on things while using the Delo HD EP2 in all of the roller bearings. I don't feel we have enough roller bearings in conditions where we would see the benefits of the TRC880 with its higher cost.

This would keep things at 2 greases which wouldn't be bad. I would really have to make sure anybody else that comes in to grease something knows what is going on though. Different colored guns would probably be in order.

The only other grease we would need is some EP0 for the auto luber on our milk truck. I was just going to get a 10 pack of the Delo from our supplier to keep on the shelf, 10 tubes will go a long way in that thing.

 

[Rob_Roy]

The two greases you mentioned would not have a compatability problem, but I understand the need to put the right grease where you want it. I always prefer to use one grease in everything, but if you must use different products some spray paint on the barrel works wonders.

Sounds like your Delo rep. has his act together. Do they offer oil analysis?

One more thing, if someone is getting paid $10 per hour to pump $3.50 worth of grease per hour....is a premium grease still more expensive to use? It is common to cut grease consumption (and time) by 50% when switching to a product that doesn't wash or pound out. I love TRC 880 because it stays put and the oil doesn't separate, but there are plenty of other greases that are much better than average. Schaeffers makes an excellent grease as well.

 

[durallymax]

Yes they do offer oil Analysis and as soon as I run out of Blackstone containers I will switch to their service and save quite a bit.

I realize the savings can be high. I like to keep just one grease if possible, but its sounding more and more like it would maybe be in our best interest to have two. The Delo is working much better, we'll run it for a bit now and then try the 880 down the road to compare.