Re: Grease guns
Grease is acombination of oil and a soap. The soap is the type of grease such as calcium or lithium and others. Not all soaps are compatible so you shouldn't mix them without checking first. If you aren't sure you have to clean out all the old grease before re-paking the bearing or joint. Charts of compatibility are available on-line. Just google it.
High temp grease is just grease that stands up to the higer temperatures; typical use is for hubs with disk brakes. You can use high temp grease in other applications without problem if you don't mind the few cents extra cost.
Merc says to use their 2-4-C many places. 2-4-C is a lithium grease with Teflon added. It is good stuff BUT it turns hard and crusty in salt water!!!! So now even Merc says to use Merc "Spline Grease" in many places that their older manuals said to use 2-4-C.
Merc Spline Grease is a calcium based marine grease. (material safety sheet.)
Calcium based greases work OK with lithium. You can mix them. So Merc Spline Grease can be used where you previously used 2-4-C without going too nuts cleaning out the old grease.... unless the old 2-4-C has gotten all hard and crusty. Which it will do in salt water in places where it was specifically called for like on prop shaft splines and so on..
Lubrimatic 11404 is a calcium based marine grease which is, as far as I can tell, the same as Merc Spline Grease. It is also compatible with lithium greases and therefore with 2-4-C. It has a high drop out temperature so it qulaifies as High Temp. It is marine grease so it is formulated to resist water wash out. Marine use, bearings, splines, shafts, studs, hubs, disk brake hubs, what's not to like?
Since I figured all the above out (which took some time) I use Lubrimatic 11404 pretty much everywhere I need grease and I have gone from 3 or 4 grease guns laying around to just the one.
Lubrimatic also sells the same grease labled with other 1140x numbers. The last x number is just for different packaging.. like small cartridges, regular cartridges, 5 lb tubs, whatever.
Please, though, if you have a highly specialized application do a little research first to make sure you have the right grease. Don't just take my word for it.
Peter
