David G. White wrote:
> Pardon my ignorance, but exactly how does this "grease injector" work?
> I'm not aware of any grease receptacle port on typical freewheels.
The tool threads into the back of the freewheel and seals against the body with a rubber O-ring. There's a Zerk fitting on the tool to which you can attach a standard grease gun, and then pump grease into the freewheel until it comes out the gap between the inner and outer bodies.
NB: soak the freewheel in solvent first and blow it out with compressed air to remove any old gunk first. No point pumping clean grease into a dirty freewheel.
My experience is that this lasts quite a while; a couple years at least, depending on how thick a grease you use. When you first use the freewheel after greasing it, it will feel quite stiff but should loosen up fairly quickly. Some people have had problems with the pawls sticking in the grease and not catching. I had not had this happen to any of my freewheels until this spring in fact, and I've been injecting grease into my freewheels for at least 20 years now. Using a lighter, less viscous grease will help avoid this problem. If your freewheel has problems like this, just soak it in solvent and rinse the grease out and you're no worse off than before greasing the freewheel.
An added benefit of this is that your freewheel will be virtually silent. When it starts to get noisy again you know it's time to clean and regrease.
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John (john@os2.dhs.org)
Appleton WI USA