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No chassis lube?

10K views 7 replies 5 participants last post by  Mongo 
#1 ·
I have been looking through the owners manual and cannot find any mention of lubricating chassis components during routine maintenance.

Took a quick look under the Jeep and could not find any zerk fittings as well.

Yes, I am asking this question after owning the vehicle for over 5 years :eyemouth:. Better late than never!!!!
 
#3 ·
The quality of the components and the improvements of the lube used at the factory, I guess they concluded periodic servicing is no longer required. In some cases it does seem to be true, ball joints and chassis pieces seem to last just as long without servicing as they did when we did service them periodically.

I wonder if peroidic greasing of the control arm ball joints would help them last longer? I've never tried it, but have been told you can drill a hole in the metal cap and screw a zerq fitting into it, and it should allow you to force grease through the ball joint.

Ball joints for the control arms, keep in mind the last 25 years the big trend was the MacPherson struts in all the vehicles. That type of chassis puts very little stress on the ball joints. The Commander and a lot of newer vehicles have gone back to some variant of the double wishbone suspension, that puts lots of stress on the ball joints.

1970's cars, it was common to replace ball joints in the chassis all the time, today when vehicle that use the double wishbone suspension and need new ball joints, we all act surprised like its some sort of design flaw.
 
#4 ·
The reasons for eliminating grease fittings are twofold.....maybe threefold.
Naturally, cost is one of them......it costs time and money to thread for a fitting and fittings cost money.
When a manufacturer makes several hundred thousand examples a year and each of them have six or more fittings, thats a lot of money.
One of the things I read said the biggest cause of greasable component failure was the failure to wipe the fitting clean prior to lubrication......seems the debris sitting on the fitting gets fired into the component, actually hasening wear.
The other thing is actually greasing the component correctly.
For example, a lower control arm ball joint is only effectivly greased if the wheel is lifted off the ground by raising it under the control arm, unloading the ball joint.
Since the majority of folks use a Jiffy lube or some variation, well, those places lubricate while the vehicle is on its wheels from a pit below the car.
Very high joint failure is the result because the grease never made it to the load area of the joint.
Add to that a lot of parts get replaced, such as idler arms (old style truck stuff) because free play is evident.
Most OE idlers are supposed to have verticle play, but it seems no one wants to check the service manual.
These often get replaced with a aftermarket part (moog comes to mind) that use a different, no play design.
Trouble is, the part that got changed was serviceable.

I have a 95 and 96 Impala....grease fittings at every joint.
I have a 96 Blazer and a 97 Chev fullsize truck....same deal, grease fittings everywhere including the driveshaft.
The Blazer is the best example.....at 262000 miles it still flies every front end component it was made with.....I doubt if our Commanders will have this much success....or my 08 Malibu or 07 Magnum..no fittings to be found and on the forums, the big Mopars rarely make 50k with their original ball joints.

What a incredibly long winded way of saying I wish my stuff still came with fittings.

Oh well.....the price of progress???

Rob
 
#5 ·
Ever tried to drill a hole and add your own fitting? I'd worry about introducing metal shaving from the drilling, and thus it would be ultimately counterproductive. But, I've been told, and by all appearances, if you wanted you could just drill a hole in the sheet metal cap on the ball joints and add a grease fitting.
 
#8 ·
We should also add that owners can use incompatible greases to service the ball joints and that would be counterproductive, actually reducing the lube to the ball joint and increasing the wear.


And unfortunately, those U-Joints are unserviceable. They stake the U-Joint into the aluminum drive shaft. So, if you have bad U-Joints you are suppose to replace the entire driveshaft.

Lots of people have gotten around that, since they use normal U-Joints, they force the U-Joint cup out of the driveshaft, install a new U-Joint and restake the driveshaft. Since its aluminum, I'd suspect there are only so many times you can restake those lugs.

No one knows the part number for the U-Joint, at least that I am aware of, so if you're going to attempt this, you would have to make an educated guess by measuring the U-Joint as best as possible and try to determine the best replacement off the measurements.
 
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