What is the best ball joint grease?

Maintenance/Repairs
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21

No bearing buddies?

22

No, I just donā€™t see the benefit in them.

23

Iā€™ve used general purpose, red grease, and moly with no issues at all from any of them. Red and moly are best IMO.
Any grease is better than no grease IMO and you may be overthinking this issue.

2 Likes
24

Squirt new grease in, no muss, no fuss, 35 years and going strong.

25

Where does the old grease go? How do you know the bearings are good without looking at them?

26

If they start grinding I know the bearing is bad. I do not know where the grease goes, only that it goes.

27

So I have looked into this some since my original post.

NLGI certification certifies grease to certain standards and testing.
https://www.nlgi.org/certifications/product/
Apparently they are tested to ASTM D4950.
NLGI-LA or NLGI-LB certified greases are greases that are certified for chassis components.
NLGI-GA, NGLI-GB and NLGI-GC certified greases are greases that are certified for wheel bearings.
NLGI-GC-LB certified greases can be used for chassis components or wheel bearing applications.

I have seen NGLI-1 and NLGI-2 greases before at stores. I guess the NLGI-2 certified grease is more thicker than the NLGI-1 certified grease.

So it seems for ball-joint grease I would wont a NLGI-LB or NLGI-GC-LB certified grease.

28

My boat trailer has drilled spindles, zerk is on the end of the spindle, grease goes to the center then lubes both inner and outer wheel bearings.

ā€œI do not know where the grease goes, only that it goes.ā€

Trailer hubs get warm to hot on the road, then immersed in cool/cold water, water is drawn into the hub, washes grease out.

29

I had Bearing Buddies on my box trailer. It never got dunked in water so 5 pumps of grease in each of the 4 wheels each year kept the bearings happy. I never had to replace one.

I have a fixture with 2 cone shaped parts and a spindle that allowed me to drop tapered roller bearings in and pump grease through before installation. Less messy than pushing in with the palm of your hand. Used for my race car that got the brakes and then bearings very hot.

I used the same grease for my ball joints.

30

Yep, bearing grease works just fine for lubing anything on the chassis

But you donā€™t want to use chassis lube on bearings.

2 Likes
31

Yeah, bearings live a hard life, lots of load at high rpms. Ball joints and tie rod ends? They live on Easy Street!

32

Probably not technically a ball joint since thereā€™s no up and down motion, the only motion is steering. Iā€™m surprised there are no grease fittings there on that old rig. I canā€™t remember if my old solid axle Jeep had zerks there or not. I do remember a lot of zerksā€¦ujoints had zerks, 4wd lever, clutch bell crank (didnā€™t see that one until I had to replace the bushings inside!), along with all the other normal steering parts.

My 05 Sierra has zerks for the ball joints. I was kind of surprised.

33

By 1980 Fords twin-I-beam axles used ball joints which had grease fittings.

A needle grease gun adapter is available that pierces the rubber boots on sealed chassis components and properly using them can keep original sealed components lasting indefinitely.

2 Likes
34

Youā€™re overthinking this.

35

This is starting to sound like the trans pan bolt debacle.

3 Likes
36

Iā€™m thinking that there should be a rule that every five years or so, everything ever written by a person on line should be purged and off to a fresh start.

37

then how would other people searching for answers on their vehicles find the answer if everything is purged?

1 Like
38

A five year old answer would be questionable.

39

I enjoy reading old threads, 90% of the replies are bad advice. Perhaps those who posted would like those treads closed.

40

I live in a the rust belt where it sometimes gets below zero degrees F in the winter. Should I used a NLGI 1 or NLGI 2 grease?