School me: Grease

[Max123]

Gearing up for fall maintenance and feel like I may have been doing this wrong for a while, so would appreciate a little schooling:

I've got a single grease gun that has marine grease in it - its takes the larger size cartridge, so I only need to replace the grease every few years. I think it was a cartidge of Shell multi purpose marine grease, but can't recall for certain (colour is dark / navy blue). I've been using this for everything. Wheel bearing zerks, outboard tilt and steering tube zerks, prop shaft. I also use it on my truck for the driveshaft zerks. If it just needs a smear of grease, I have a small tube of Superlube

Anyway, was recently reading about different types of grease. Lithium grease is typical for vehicle chassis points, marine grease has calcium sulphonate,

Seems like these two are generally compatible, and for my usage I suspect general purpose marine grease is basically fine for everything. Is there any application I should keep separate greases for? Is there a type to specifically avoid because of incompatibility? Typically for wheel bearings I'll buy a tub of marine grease for a rebuild and then top up every now and then with whatever is in the gun - problem? Ideally one product would be great, because I really don't want to own a bunch of different grease guns.

Evinrude seems to use 'triple guard grease' for literally everything - decent product? worth buying a few cartridges and phasing everything else out? Shell marine grease, Superlude, Quicksilver? Recommendations - or does it just not really matter that much (as long as you are doing it).

 

[zurk]

i use quicksilver or yamalube. increasingly ive just been using yamalube.
that being said -- never mix greases. i did that on my other non marine trailer since i had marine and non marine greases and i had axle issues. the mechanic who opened it up said the greases had formed small balls of hardened grease in the hubs and reacted to each other. he said it was best if you dont mix greases. YMMV.

 

[Loghauler]

Ya I agree with zurk just go buy another gun for your boat and use your axle/driveline grease more often if it’s drying out
Hit it once before and after season and a couple times a mid season for problem free use
And I use my starplex ep2 from chevron on everything except my boat

 

[Loghauler]

Ya I agree with zurk just go buy another gun for your boat and use your axle/driveline grease more often if it’s drying out
Hit it once before and after season and a couple times a mid season for problem free use
And I use my starplex ep2 from chevron on everything except my boat

I’ve also got four grease guns lol

 

[Loghauler]

Nope five lol

 

[Pineapple Express]

Gearing up for fall maintenance and feel like I may have been doing this wrong for a while, so would appreciate a little schooling:

I've got a single grease gun that has marine grease in it - its takes the larger size cartridge, so I only need to replace the grease every few years. I think it was a cartidge of Shell multi purpose marine grease, but can't recall for certain (colour is dark / navy blue). I've been using this for everything. Wheel bearing zerks, outboard tilt and steering tube zerks, prop shaft. I also use it on my truck for the driveshaft zerks. If it just needs a smear of grease, I have a small tube of Superlube

Anyway, was recently reading about different types of grease. Lithium grease is typical for vehicle chassis points, marine grease has calcium sulphonate,

Seems like these two are generally compatible, and for my usage I suspect general purpose marine grease is basically fine for everything. Is there any application I should keep separate greases for? Is there a type to specifically avoid because of incompatibility? Typically for wheel bearings I'll buy a tub of marine grease for a rebuild and then top up every now and then with whatever is in the gun - problem? Ideally one product would be great, because I really don't want to own a bunch of different grease guns.

Evinrude seems to use 'triple guard grease' for literally everything - decent product? worth buying a few cartridges and phasing everything else out? Shell marine grease, Superlude, Quicksilver? Recommendations - or does it just not really matter that much (as long as you are doing it).

I'm like you...I use one type of grease for almost everything: Lucas Red'n'Tacky. I use this for trailer wheel bearings, the stator bearings in my jet boat pump, any above water zerks on my outboards, etc

Red "N" Tacky Grease | Lucas Oil Products

Lucas Red

www.lucasoil.ca

The exception is for submerged items that need to be disassembled (primarily prop splines) I use Mercury Quicksilver 2-4-C grease

2-4-C Marine Grease With Teflon - 8oz | Quicksilver

 

[Max123]

I kind of knew when I was writing this post that the answer was likely going to be:

buy a grease gun for your outboard,
buy a grease gun for your trailer
buy a grease gun for your truck

Isn't there some kind of grease that 'generally' works well for all of these uses? This is one of those cases where i'd rather have the swiss army knife of greases rather than something that is super high performance, but for a very limited application

 

[zurk]

you can use yamalube for all of it but you will pay thru your nose for it.
better to use a cheaper grease for hubs/trailers and the yamalube for the boat.

Amazon.ca

 

[Max123]

$20 for two tubes of premium grease seems fair. You are right about trailers - I used up a ton of grease re-packing the bearings and filling the hubs.