Ok, this will be my last post to this thread. I've laid out the specifics and I'm sorry Star but you are wrong also. Making it so you have to drop the deck to grease is well, foolish and mostly a waste of time if all you want to do is hit them with a shot of grease. For God's sake, JD put those openings there for a reason, and in the process made it super fast and easy to do. I agree on the cleaning aspect but an air compressor does a lovely job as well. But I'm not going to argue any more. Just the facts...
Bio, please look at the attached. I have circled the openings in the plastic covers which were specifically put there to facilitate reaching the grease fittings straight on, with no extra work. All you have to do is place your plastic covers on and look through openings I've circled. When your spindles are in the right location, you'll have an extremely simple, straight shot to hit them with the grease gun, as the tractor comes brand new. Please do that simple test. Then I think you'll see why JD put those openings there and why you need to rotate the one on the left 90 deg and the one on the right all the way around to line up with its opening.
Nuff said...
Yes I understood that there is an OEM way but not all of us have the correct grease applicators as Biodiesel just pointed out as being his problem too. My comment was that the location where zerk were installed would work fine.
I had relocated zerks over the years too as some couplers that I have used are impossible to get connected including my current locking type. I can see if you have grease gun with a solid extension you can get the coupler on and off easier but for me I use flex hoses which can at times make it times hard to get things on. Especially if you got one that likes to go on but won't come off; unless, you loosen the coupler's barrel. I just toss one those in the trash a month ago.
It comes down that we don't have to do things exactly how JD does it on everything. I recently install a different drive coupler on a JD 445 mower if I had use the PN they want me to do they would have squeeze another $30 out of my customer. The I used is the same coupler just under another PN. Their are few that insist me on buying parts from JD even I can go to OEM of the equipment for a better PN they apparently just to pay for the JD name to on the packaging. Usually I can lay the two parts side by side and show the customer that there is no difference other than the packaging.
It is also like my 2000 Chevy s1500 rear different oil fill is not in the factory location as the fill point is rusted solid and I had to install one in another location. Besides someone at GM was being cheap as the plug barely has any depth for the tool to get lock in solid. It was either that of get another differential. I probably will change the planetary and satellite gears this summer along with the right axle.
Besides most my customers just don't clean their decks off after mowing making it one heck of a mess to clean up. I mean the stuff is caked on and no amount of air can easily blow it off, some require scrapers to remove the wet decaying organics and a welder to patch rust outs. So when the equipment comes in the shop many decks need to come off anyways. I just brought in such customer's mower where require using major cleaning tools along me having to pull the GTI transaxle for cleaning and to find why in will not go into bypass mode. We loaded it after pulling one of rear wheels to remove the key. Some the stuff makes great additional material for my garden.
I do admit this is one of the cleanest deck I have seen in a while so it will not have the problems that others do from rusting.
