Wet bolts will not take grease

[aatauses]

Hi everyone,
We had wet bolts installed on our 2010 BH 3670 at the same time we had our CP installed. They greased the wet bolts during installation? I now can only get grease into a few of them. If I remember correctly?? the bolts have a samll hole in them and that hole needs to be installed either right or left not up or down as the grease will not go in because of the weight of the rv---is this correct?? If is can I just turn them or do I need to jack up the rv, take them out and reinstall?? I think they were "hammered in" because they had small grooves to hold in place?? Cannot take back to installer as we are now 1200 miles from them
thanks
al

 

[boatdoc]

Take the zirks out, 5/16th nut driver, and see if grease goes thru them while out of the bolt. I'm betting the zirks are plugged.

 

[lwmcguir]

Don't try to turn the bolts without removing them by driving them out. Turning them in place will enable the bolts to turn and wear out your hangers. Do you have a good quality HP grease gun? If the Zerk's anent plugged then you can try to use a hammer type grease fitting cleaner that you use to squirt WD40 into the wet bolt. After that you can follow it with grease. We use this quite a bit on machinery that sit outside over a winter.

 

[davidg]

What happened to mine was the small holes in the bolts had pluged up with dirt/grease which had caked up, before removing them lift the weight off of the suspension, then try to grease them, this worked for me with some of them the others I had to remove and clean out the small holes, when removing the bolts just pay attention to where the holes are you may want to move them a bit to see if that is any better in the future.
Good luck

 

[hoefler]

Try removing the Zerk, then clean out as much grease as you can out of the bolt. Liberally squirt carburetor cleaner in the bolt and let it soak a bit. Squirt some more cleaner in it and install the Zerk. Now hit it with the grease gun. You should be able to push out the carburetor cleaner and get clean grease coming out of it. Keep pumping until you get grease coming out everywhere. The most common mistake made, most people only pump enough grease in until the hear it move or see it start to come out. You need to pump enough grease it to get the old grease, dirt, and water come out, and you need to keep pumping until you get mostly clean grease coming out. Messy, yes. Grease is cheaper than the repair!

 

[jolar3329]

Take the weight off of the axle, jack it up, and the grease will flow.

 

[aatauses]

Great suggestions/advice--let me try a few and see how I make out---If I need to take the weight off the axle, will I need to do that each time I grease or do you think there is some dirt in there and should be ok once I get that removed?
I had not thought about the fitting being bad--that will be an easy fix after I check them.
Really appreciate your input
al

 

[traveler44]

Do you have to take the weight off of both axles to get grease in the middle ones? I am having as much trouble getting grease in the bolts in the middle equalizer as in the end ones. Some of mine took grease very easily and some didn't.

 

[Hockster]

I had one replaced on my Big Country.
I kept the old one.
I took the zerk fitting out and used a small drill bit and ran it in the length of the bolt to clean out the old hard grease, then cleaned out the cross drilled hole also.
I then used spray brake cleaner to flush out everything.
I then used compressed air to blow everything out.
I ran fresh grease through the zerk, to make sure it was clear and reinstalled that into the bolt.
I keep this in my tool box as a spare.
The odd thing was, the wet bolts were installed in June 2011.
To me, it should not have had hardened grease in the bolt so soon.
Seemed like a used bolt to me.

Hockster

 

[Hastey]

If you go by a farm and ranch store or possibly auto parts stores, you can purchase a zerk tool at a very inexpensive price. I have one in my toolbox that I use often. It is the zerk wrench, worm out tool to get the dry grease out and thread repair all in one. Looks like a valve core tool.