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TR2/3/3A Universal Joint Lube Question

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Daves1957TR-3

Senior Member
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Hello,

I am getting my TR 3 back on the road slowly but surely. I have some of the carpet out for another issue and saw the very convenient plug covering the front u-joint access hole. While I can get to it, I will go ahead and get some lube in there. I looked in the forum to answers to these but didn't find out much.

Questions:

1. The shop manual calls for injecting oil into the zerk. Is this necessary or can I just put in moly grease?

2. Is there a corresponding access port for the rear u-joint or is it access from underneath only? I don't want to remove carpet unnecessarily. :eek:

Thanks, Dave
 
I would suggest the moly grease, there is a reason the service intervals on newer cars are anywhere from 60,000 miles to practically forever. I'LL let the TR3 experts pipe in about the rear, but my slightly educated guess is that it would be an under the car job.
 
I've always used grease for U-joints, seems to work fine as long as you keep dosing them reasonably often. I shoot for every year (which has been about 10k-12k miles for me) but don't always achieve even that in practice. The book also says to oil them every 1000 miles and that just isn't happening for me.

Note that there are a bunch of other grease points under the back of the car, worth doing at the same time. Driveshaft splines, rear wheel bearings, handbrake (2 nipples), etc. Don't forget to brush the road springs with oil and at least top up the rear axle (book says to change it).
 
in other words once you are under there, you might as well take in all the sites and get all the work done possible. It isn't easy getting under these cars unless you happen to have a drive over ramp or something similar.
Charley
 
An easy Zerk to miss is the one on the driveshaft splines. I think I had the car for about 25 years when one day I was reading the lube chart and thought "Hey, what is that?".

Easy to miss + hard to get to. You will probably need a special right angle access tip for the grease gun (I did anyway).

Everyone here is a car guy so they won't even think it strange when I say that '...one day I was reading the lube chart...'.
 
Thanks all! OK I will go ahead and grease. I was kinda wondering how I was going to be able to put oil under pressure into a zerk, so at least I don't have to worry about that now!

I am planning on taking the car to a guy with a lift and will see if I can get those fittings in the back greased. Everything in the front has been attended to.

More questions, more threads coming.

Cheers, Dave
 
Geo Hahn said:
Everyone here is a car guy so they won't even think it strange when I say that '...one day I was reading the lube chart...'.
Click to expand...
Amen, Geo!
 
Isn't the zerk for the driveshaft slip joint also accessed through the passenger compartment opening in the driveshaft tunnel that serves the front U-joint?
 
Darned if I recall for sure - I might even had had the tunnel off when I got to it.

May have been one of those situations where you can see the part & you can touch the part -- but you can't do both at the same time.
 
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