Grease nipple plea

[Steve Jones]

I'd like to know more about the oiler idea.

I have never managed to get grease to flow through my semi girling stub axles, it prefers to escape from around the upper blanking caps despite these being tack welded in place by Vince Leek when he refurbished them.  Goodness knows how much pressure is being applied from the lever type grease gun. Even warming the grease and the stub axle doesn't seem to help.  Maybe the clearance between pin and bush is just too small ?

 
After years of struggling to get grease to properly lubricate king pins on both Girling and earlier stub axles I realised that as well as the problem John describes above, with Girlings, over time, grease tended to harden at the bottom of the pin and block the hole leading to the bottom bush on both types. Those who knew the late Ian Sly will confirm he was very good at coming up with the most simple of answers to all sorts of problems. In this case he simply said 'Don't use grease'. He'd already converted Vicki's Ulster to flip top oilers and he used some sort of steam oil instead.

I therefore converted the stubs on my Trials Chummy and Ulster to flip top oilers as the previous photo. The King Pins need to be removed and cleaned of any old grease before converting so the oil can flow properly. The oilers are made up using suitable oilers bought from Ebay and an original 'square block' nipple removed and saved for another day from some axle or other in the past. A bit of modification to the nipple, a 5/16" BSF thread on the end and it's done.

I use 140 axle oil in the oilers. I lift the front of the cars up so that the wheels are off the ground and fill the oilers from an oil can then leave overnight with the car off the ground and let gravity do its job. I might give an extra shot or two before leaving it. Next morning there's evidence of the oil on the back plates at both the top and the bottom showing the oil's got to where it needs to be. For the Trials Car, because of the environment it was operating in I used to remove the oilers before an event and fit blanking plugs but I'm not sure that was really necessary.

Both cars have been like this for a fair few years now and I've never had any problems. Some people have copied the idea and some others confirm they gave up with grease and use oil a long time ago however they get it in. I also use oil in the pins on my SWB Saloon with pre-Girling stubs. There it's simply a matter of removing the brass plug and filing the king pin with oil from the oil can. The one issue I did have, however, was with the Ulster at a Sprint event at Blyton last year. This was an event for modern cars with our few A7s bolted on at the back. As I was making my way to the start line a scrutineer pulled me to one side and said I looked to have a hydraulic oil leak to the front brakes on both sides of the car   Being fair to him, he had no experience of our pre-war cars and was very embarrassed when I explained how that was impossible!!


Steve