Melvin Waldron, CGCS said:
On your rotary rough mowers, how often are you greasing items? Specifically you caster wheels and yokes? Spindles? Are you following the manufacturers guidelines? Rollers, lifts arms, and spindles get a few shots every 1-2 weeks, depending on weather and how wet/dry. Sometimes its weekly if we are really wet. I NEVER full fill a spindle or purge it
More general, do you follow the maintenance schedules in your owners manuals? For filters only. I use a proactive/predictive approach with oil analysis for most fluids. For greasing, never.
Thanks!
Mel
When I first started operators were "greasing" their pieces, daily. I watched an operator grease an entire rough mower in under 5 minutes. I didn't feel that made my job easier, long term, so I took it all back over. I spend about a half hour every week to two going over closely and greasing as needed.
For reel bearings I ONLY grease them prior to a grind, so I can capture the excess the bearing doesn't want (ala electric motor handbook), and I only fully grease them once a year. They may get a pump or two to sweeten it up during the season grinding, but I always do it where I can wipe out what the bearing expels during the spin grind process. Our Toro 5500 SPA's (20 cutting units) went nine seasons without a bearing replacement. I finally had to put new reel stock in, so they got new bearings, although I felt they looked like new.
One of those bearings is nine seasons old with about 3000 machine hours.