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MG MGB Technical - Lubricating U-joints

I can see the grease fittings on the u-joints, but my grease gun hose can't reach them. One is too close to the yoke and the other seems to be pointing into the side of the yoke.

Do I need a different gun, hose, or new fittings?

Dan

Dan, you can buy adapters that are supposed to work, but I have never found the right adapter and haven't been successful with them. They work OK on a chainsaw bar but not very well on U-joints. Since the MGB driveshaft is easy to remove you may be able to lubricate them with the driveshaft removed. When I replaced the U-joints on my car I found some repalcements with fittings in the outside end of the spider. I got them at Advance. When I tried to find them for another car they didn't have anything but fittings in the center of the spider or with no fittings.

Your u-joints may not be assembled correctly. Look in Les Bengtson's web site under U-joints for details.
http://www.custompistols.com/cars/index.htm

Clifton
Clifton Gordon

Clifton. I, too, have never been able to get the various "adaptors" to work with my grease gun and my U joints. Thus, your idea of removing the flange makes excellent sense.

Tom Sotomayer's tech article, which is hosted on my website, is an excellent one and well worth reading. I had to replace a prop shaft because the professional mechanic who had installed it did not install it properly. I have the U joints in my collection of "things done very wrong". Tom spent a weekend with us a few years ago and offered to write the article based on the number of problems he had found over the years. Adrienne was not sure about offering "bed, board and transportation" to an MG owner I only knew through the internet. After Tom's vist, her response is, "You can always make people like this welcome in our home". Tom was an excellent guest and a knowledgable enthusiast who decided to repay my minor hospitality with two excellent articles. I cannot thank him enough for taking the time to visit with us and for taking the time to write a couple of very important articles that I lacked the expertise to write.

Les
Les Bengtson

Les, feel free to add this to Tom's article.
The driveshaft was assembled incorrectly, and/or it has the wrong ujoints installed. Some ujoints have the grease fitting in the plane of the 4 spider shafts - these are wrong. Correct (and most common) ujoints have the fitting out of this plane, ie, sticking out toward one side. There are 4 possible ways to install the in-plane joint, and a total of eight for the out-of-plane one - only ONE way is correct. The yoke on the driveshaft is assymetric, having a forged-in depression at only one point where the "ear" blends into the shaft. This depression is for the greasegun nozzle. You MUST use the out-of-plane type uj; the fitting MUST face toward the shaft center, NOT the flange - this eliminates 4 of the 8 possible positions; and the fitting MUST be located in the depression, which eliminates 3 more. Now the grease gun will fit.
If the uj's fitted are the in-plane type, you can usually remove the existing fitting (or plug) and install a long type fitting to grease it, but it's no fun. DO NOT leave the long fitting in place, as it WILL be broken off in operation!
FRM
FR Millmore

Dear Fletcher. I do realize that you have your own website. However, mine gets a lot of traffic because they know my name, but not yours, and do not realize that you know a lot more than I do. Thus, should you be willing, either send me this information through my website e-mail or, include this information on your website and e-mail me with permission to link to your site so that it may be included. Even should you desire to have me post this information, permission to link to your website would be appreciated. May take a little time as "we" (the wife and older daugher) are planning a wedding using wedding cars tunbridge wells. Hence, I am spending a lot of time working on cars.

Thanks, Les
Les Bengtson

Who is getting married Les - your wife or your daughter!

That what mine keeps threatening because of the amount of time I spend on the MGB.
Les

Great explanation, Fletcher!

More can be found here: http://www.usachoice.net/gofanu/Index.html
Bob Muenchausen

Bob,dont quite understand that link,but then i dont have a Philosophy Degree.... :)
Rich Osterhout

We could always ask Fletcher to answer that, but I am just grateful for his answers to our technical problems.
Bob Muenchausen

Are you doing this on, or off, the car?

Removing the driveshaft from the car allows
greater access the grease nipples as you can
rotate the drive flanges further out of the way.

I use the extended nipples to grease the U-joints,
then remove them and plug the holes with allen
set screws as they will be snapped off once the
car is underway.
Daniel Wong

I was trying to do this with the drive shaft on the car.
Dan

I found a grease gun from my local Halfords with a .45 inch diameter end , in difference to the norm,I think of, .60 inch. that fits directly onto the U joint nipples. It's quite difficult to use as it's the old hand push job, and getting enough pressure on it for it to work correctly can be a pain, but it does the job.
Bob
R Etches

This thread was discussed between 21/04/2006 and 24/04/2006

MG MGB Technical index

This thread is from the archive. The Live MG MGB Technical BBS is active now.