Button head grease fittings

[stmftr395]

I am actually getting close enough with my rebuild to start thinking about the smaller assembly issues. Most of the grease fittings on the track assemblies are currently button head. Not sure yet if they will take grease so I am going to have a supply of replacement fittings on hand. I am wondering if I should use the button head type or if I should replace all of the fittings with the standard type? What are the pros/cons? The voice of experience will help me decide. Mark

[roadbuilder]

Hi,
IMO the button head are more durable. At least as far as the rollers go. To the best of my knowledge, our 52 MC still has its orginals and they still take grease without any leakage. With all the stuff you run through laying on the ground, I'd expect the standard heads to wear or break off quicker.

[Stan Disbrow]

Hi,

When my dad picked up the '58 420c in '67, it needed a full track rebuild. It had been used cleaning out dairy barns, and the acids had gotten to everything. Including most of the roller grease fittings.

He opted to replace all the buttonhead fittings with standard zerks. We are smart enough to know which grease goes where and use two guns. I think that the use of the buttonheads was to differentiate which grease (and gun) to use more than anything.

We've only had to replace one zerk in all those years, and it was at the back end of the left-hand lift cylinder. None of the zerks on the rollers or idlers have had to be replaced.

So, in our experience, the buttonheads had issues after 9 years yet the replacement zerks have gone 43 years.

Of course, manure encrusted buttonheads are not common and we've not used the machine in the same manner (shoveling sheisse, pardon my German!) as the original owner, so said experience is probably useless.

Oh, and dad thought that the original owner didn't know what a grease gun was, actually, so maybe if he'd actually greased the thing the original fittings might well have been fine, and the roller bushings as well....

Anyway, haven't busted off the zerks with all the rock cutting, dirt digging, road building and log hauling. I think they're pretty well protected by the 'eyebrows' at each fitting location.

I do have to dig them out from under the dirt when I want to grease, but then my '69 JD350 had buttonheads and they gunked up just as badly. So, no help there.

I also think that whatever you decide on, make them all the same. It'd be maddening to have half-and-half fittings!

later!

Stan

[Lavoy]

A buttonhead fitting will "flow" more due to the size of the check ball it has compared to a standard zerk. It will kind of be a personal choice in the end.
Lavoy

[JD440ICD2006]

Aside from flowing a little better, I always felt like they would hold up better. A rock or other hard object slidng by a button head would not typically break the head off, whereas it could with the standard jerk.
It also helps me keep the right grease in the right gun.
Bottom line, personal choice.

[Ray III]

Zerks get pretty annoying when they get worn. Buttonheads won't pop the hose off when you try to pump grease in them.

[KenP]

deleted

[Stan Disbrow]

Hi,

Well, there were always high pressure and low pressure guns. The old low pressure one we've always used was just for greasing the 420c's rollers.

I have a second one with the same grease in it with the buttonhead fitting on it. That was from my JD350 as it still had those fittings on it. Dad had opted to change the ones on the 420c as they were mostly bad and I opted to not change them on the 350 as they were all OK.

My first rule is that if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

You have to use a rather high flow rate grease in the rollers, meaning the stuff is rather on the runny side for grease. I always thought that the different fittings for the rollers and idlers were to differentiate not only the pressure the gun can produce, but also said: 'hey, use the gun with the runny grease in it, not the one with thick, sticky, chassis grease'.

If you couldn't fit the chassis grease gun onto the fitting, then you'd have to go get the right gun with the right grease in it, right?

From what I've seen this just meant that most folks never bothered to grease the things at all! So, now we have sealed for life rollers, but that's a different story for a different thread....

All this presumes the usual commercial useage of the machines, of course. Once it's a private machine with one or two users of it, then none of these things matter.

In my case, I know which zerk gun is low pressure and has the runny roller grease in it, and which ones have all manner of other greases in them and can grab the correct one for the thing I'm about to grease.

I figure anyone that's been here on this board for a while knows these things as well, so I don't think it matters which fittings one chooses to use.

Later!

Stan