L48 grease fitting on BACKSIDE of front axle

jgoodma1

New member

Equipment
L48
Aug 5, 2017
26
1
1
Raleigh, NC, USA
I have an L48 TLB with 1270 hours on it. I bought it 10 years ago with 1150 hours on it, so it hasn't had heavy use by me, but I have been using it more often lately. Today I was greasing it, and I am pretty religious about greasing it every 10 hours. I have the WSM and Operator's manual, and I always double check them to make sure I don't miss a zerk. There is 1 zerk shown in the manual for the front axle pivot, where you have to remove a square-headed plug on the opposite side of the pivot bracket to permit the grease to flow through, and I make sure I grease one each time too. Well, today I was crawling around under the machine and I noticed for the first time, a zerk on the BACKSIDE of the front axle.

In the attached photos, I am taking the photo facing forward towards the FEL bucket. The cover with the zerk contains the the spiral bevel pinion shaft for the FWD (I think). I haven't greased that fitting the whole time I've owned the machine, but I have had work done on it at the dealer and when it was there, I had them do a complete PM service, so I'm guessing (hoping) they greased it. I cannot find any reference to that zerk in any of the manuals. Today I squirted a lot of grease into that fitting, and it never overflowed out of the edge of the cover (the cover does have a gap around the edge where there is a little bit of grease squeeze out from a previous lubrication done at an unknown time. Does anyone know if I should continue filling that cover with grease until it comes out the edges? I want to make sure I don't screw up something by putting too much grease in it, but I have no idea how much grease should be used or how often it should be greased. Thanks.
 

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SidecarFlip

Banned

Equipment
M9000HDCC3, M9000HD, Kubota GS850 Sidekick
Oct 28, 2018
7,197
555
83
USA
Have those on my M9's too. I grease them until I can see grease oozing out between the pivot and the axle casting.
 

Magicman

Well-known member
Lifetime Member

Equipment
M4900 Utility Special 4WD e/w FEL & 1530 John Deere "Traveling Man"
Oct 8, 2019
5,538
7,680
113
81
Brookhaven, MS
knotholesawmill.com
Use your FEL to remove the load from the axle before greasing. This will give you much better coverage. Also, I would use a "high pressure" grease.