Never seen this before. I went to grease the ball joints and the grease came out the bottom of the lower ball joint. The grease comes out around the circumference of the metal base that the zerk is screwed into. The grease does not make it up to the boot. Any ideas what causes this???

d1

 

Pull the zirc out and poke a sharp object up in to the hole and twist it around gently, then replace the zirc with a new one. Have someone bounce the car a couple of time while you pump a bit of grease in there.

 

It's hard to say w/o a pic to understand exactly where it's coming from. 2 thoughts are: Some original ball joints moved internally as they wore. You could look and see from the bottom if the joint was worn. I don't know if they may have been able to leak if worn? 2nd thought is that most boots are notched or have a bleed hole in them. Grease is sneaky stuff...even though you can't see it coming from the boot, it still may have gotten out from overfilling. I've seen that a lot. Maybe you greased it with no weight on the suspension, and then when you put it down grease was forced out?

 

Which brings up a question. How much grease should be pumped in? I have always stopped when it starts to seep out, but as mrolds69 said, when the weight is put on the car, it will force out more grease.

 

A typical Cutlass will take like 1.375 pumps and it's done. No...just kidding! It's hard to say...depends if it's a big gun or a mini. Generally...you can squeeze the boot before you start, and as you fill squeeze again. If you take good care of your car, it doesn't need to be packed solid. It's especially bad for disc brakes, if there is grease oozing out everywhere. I usually grease with the control arm under weight. It's not that the joint moves when you put the car down, but the angle of the boot changes forcing grease out. I like to wipe down a day or 2 after greasing.

 

I will give that a try. Ball joint is not that old or have that many miles on it and I have not have any issues with it before.


Thanks


d1