Grease or Oil zerks?

jmhoying

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My Index Super 55 has grease zerks for all of the ways. I'm a new mill owner and it's come to my attention that these zerks on older machines might of been intended to be used for oil, not grease. Does anyone know what was originally specified?

Thanks,
Jack
 
Many of the old machines, before inexpensive lube pumps were developed they used zerk fittings and a oil gun that looks like a grease gun but has o-rings and gaskets so the way oil doesn't leak out. Many of the oil zerk fittings were bigger then a regular zerk, so you could not press on a regular grease gun. Many times a machine owner tried to grease it and couldn't so the replaced the oil zerk fittings with grease fittings and pumped in the grease. If someone has done that to your machine I would recommend you pull apart the machine and clean out the grease as it traps the chips and dirt and will lap the ways. Myford machines use both grease and oil and the Mfg. put color coded plastic washers under the zerks and used the bigger jerks fr the oil. I found some info on the web, I bet you would apprectiate it. There are some Index owners who can help you too, but maybe they are at work. I bet if you called Wells Index they can help too. Rich

http://www.lathes.co.uk/index/

http://www.wells-index.com/vertical-milling-machines.php
 
Can you buy oil guns today or am I stuck with using a modified grease gun.


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I just got off the phone with Wells-Index and they said that way oil is the only recommended lube that should be used on the table and such (even though it was made with standard grease gun size zerks). He recommended that I pull the gibs and clean it up a bit, but didn't think I needed to completely disassemble it, as the oil would eventually flush out the dirty grease.

A couple other things I learned from my phone call.
My Index Super 55 (SN 55-7171) was built in November of 1956 and sold to a business in Toledo for $2550.00. (so it's slightly younger than me!)

He said that they are surprised by how many re-grinds of the quill they do (from B&S 9 to R8). Some weeks they do 3 or 4. He said that they figured that the old mills that haven't been redone would dry up soon, but they keep showing up. I'm still holding out on that, as it'd be about $350.00 with shipping.

Jack
 
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