eavega
Lieutenant
- Joined
- Apr 29, 2008
- Messages
- 1,377
Which is the right grease? -one step beyond Bond-o's "any grease is better than none"
I have an Alpha one (first generation) with Mercruiser 3.0L 140 HP on my boat. I'm doing my first full-on "pull the drive inspect everything" service on it. So far I've pulled the drive, checked alignment, replaced the whole water pump, checked all the bellows, changed the drive gear oil. I'm now getting ready to reassemble the whole works. I remember reading somewhere that one of the maintenance items when you have the drive off is to grease the u-joints. When I was planning this maintenance last fall, I went ahead and purchased all the greases, oils, etc that I was going to need. One of the things I purchased was "Mercury Marine U-joint and Giimbal bearing Lube". Right after I installed the water pump and re-assembled the gearcase, I loaded up the u-joint and gimbal bearing lube in my grease gun, popped it on the u-joint bearing zerks and pumped until I saw the goo squeezing out. Figured I was good to go.
Today I was looking through the mercruiser manual for something else, and I see where this maintenance is covered, with the warning in bold: "Use only 2-4-C Marine Lubricant for lubricating U-joint bearings. The use of any other lubricant will decrease the life of the bearings." Did I use the wrong stuff? I have a tube of 2-4-C that I also purchased ( On my list I have it for other applications). Should I just leave be or re-fill the U-joint bearings with 2-4-C? Why the heck would Mercury have a product labeled U-Joint Bearing Lube but indicate that you should use something else? Am I just over-thinking this?
-E
I have an Alpha one (first generation) with Mercruiser 3.0L 140 HP on my boat. I'm doing my first full-on "pull the drive inspect everything" service on it. So far I've pulled the drive, checked alignment, replaced the whole water pump, checked all the bellows, changed the drive gear oil. I'm now getting ready to reassemble the whole works. I remember reading somewhere that one of the maintenance items when you have the drive off is to grease the u-joints. When I was planning this maintenance last fall, I went ahead and purchased all the greases, oils, etc that I was going to need. One of the things I purchased was "Mercury Marine U-joint and Giimbal bearing Lube". Right after I installed the water pump and re-assembled the gearcase, I loaded up the u-joint and gimbal bearing lube in my grease gun, popped it on the u-joint bearing zerks and pumped until I saw the goo squeezing out. Figured I was good to go.
Today I was looking through the mercruiser manual for something else, and I see where this maintenance is covered, with the warning in bold: "Use only 2-4-C Marine Lubricant for lubricating U-joint bearings. The use of any other lubricant will decrease the life of the bearings." Did I use the wrong stuff? I have a tube of 2-4-C that I also purchased ( On my list I have it for other applications). Should I just leave be or re-fill the U-joint bearings with 2-4-C? Why the heck would Mercury have a product labeled U-Joint Bearing Lube but indicate that you should use something else? Am I just over-thinking this?
-E
