Tool Talk
What's-It Forum => What's-It Forum => Topic started by: international3414 on February 05, 2017, 06:40:28 PM
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similar to tire valve stem tool
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Could it be for those valve stems that are retained by a nut?
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That is a Zerk grease fitting tool. The cut out on the side was so you could screw in the 90° and 45° fittings. I think the one end is an easy out for removing broken fittings and the other end is a tap.
If I remember right, these were for 1/16 in. pipe threads. I have/had one somewhere.
Mike
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Definitely a zerk tool. In the 50s some cars had as many as 45 grease zerks, and always one or two were plugged or damaged. If you didn't get them all, some owners would be right back with their car because they crawled underneath and checked them.
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Definitely a zerk tool. In the 50s some cars had as many as 45 grease zerks, and always one or two were plugged or damaged. If you didn't get them all, some owners would be right back with their car because they crawled underneath and checked them.
Which kind of raises the question of why they didn't just do the grease job while they were there.
I remember the introduction of the rubber boots that were sealed to the joint on both sides. A lot of tie rods and such had been using boots that just lapped over the joint on one side; when grease pushed out past the boot, you knew when you had put in enough grease. Shop foremen everywhere had to teach mechanics that you put in grease until the boot began to inflate, and then stop. Lots of the fancy new boots got blown out while the learning was going on.
The Motor manual would list the locations of the grease points, but young shop rats (like me) quickly learned that it was faster just to look where there might possibly be a zerk fitting; once you found one, you could figure there would be more in that area. Like seeing a good tool on the yard sale table: one good tool hints at more.
All those skills, now useful only to people working on old machines - like putting a clean corner of the shop rag with which you were cleaning the zerk fittings over a fitting with a frozen ball, to allow more pressure from the grease gun to break it loose (the fact that you were probably driving fibers from the rag into the joint, too...well, no big deal).
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thanks,tried some of my fittings,mostly for tractor/heavy equ.,tool is to small
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There are at least 2 sizes of these that I have seen.
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No surprise there. There are multiple sizes of them and tools to fit...
I always wondered why they stopped putting them in u-joints... nothing like the "clunk" to tell you those rollers were history. :rolleyes:
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Why not grease them all, well some could not be gotten at with the way the hoist arms were positioned. Some you had to swing the front wheels far left or right, (impossible on a drive on hoist). Some were frozen, and he boss was yelling for you to get get done because you got 3 more to do. Or you were working in a grease pit and simply couldn't get at all of them. Any one ever have one of those steel tubes you placed over a zerk, filled with gease, and pounded it with a hammer to force it in? Some owners wouldn't pay for a grease job every oil change and when they did one or more zerks were rusted.