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broark01's avatar
broark01
Explorer
May 02, 2016

Tips and Tricks - Wet Shackle Kit

No more squeaking and much more robust hardware BUT am I the only one who struggles with actually getting grease to flow into them?

While laying under the 5th wheel, trying to get leverage on the grease gun, I imagine I look like a monkey making love to a football. The reason for this challenge is probably that some of the grease holes in the bots are facing down and not up.

Anyway, here are some of my tips and tricks if you find yourself (which will probably never happen) in the same position:

1) Researched and obtained a "high pressure" 10,000 PSI manual grease gun (there are standard and high pressure). Not all pneumatic grease guns are high pressure and most manual grease guns are less than 5000 PSI. Learned more about grease guns than I wanted to know.

2) Found that the "high pressure" grease gun did not solve the whole problem,of course. So, drug my 20 ton jack under the trailer with me and "incrementally" jacked each of the frame welded shackle mounts (spring hanger) until enough pressure was removed from the bolt to allow the grease to flow.

3) The hotter the grease the better as far as flow-ability so left the "high pressure" grease gun laying in the sun. Be sure it does not get too hot to hold because this will make you look like a frantic monkey making love to a football.

Anyway, I am sure no one else has this challenge and just wanted to vent. Feel better now :-)
  • Had one shackle on my last trailer that had to be jacked up to grease. The hole in the wet bolt somehow lined up wrong with the bushing and the pressure of sitting normally on the ground stopped up that hole and stopped the grease. Solution was to either remove the bolt and rotate it 90 degrees or simply jack the trailer and grease. Due to simplicity I chose the latter for the short term. Sold the trailer before I was able to rotate the bolt.
  • Have you tried jacking up the trailer to take pressure off the shackles. I know you have to do that with heavy duty trucks.