How to grease the ball joints?

[DaraSue]

For an issue that can potentially cause the wheels to fall off, I'm having a ridiculously hard time finding out how to grease the ball joints. (it probably doesn't help that I've never actually done it myself before.) A friend showed me how to do it on his but that was a few months ago and hell if I can find the filler on my lower ball joint. Do I need to get the needle attachment and go in between the rubber and the metal? I'm afraid of accidentally ripping something.

[jwrayth]

The grease nipple should be on the opposite side to that which the joint faces. So bottom joint faces upward with nipple is on the underside. Top join faces downward, nipple is on the top side.

Not all of the cross reference ball joints produced/sourced had grease nipples though, so if yours don't I recommend you pick up a set of the UK Ball Joints (that I believe are available from several vendors in the USA these days too).

[David T]

If the joints don't have grease nipples you can try to lube them with a needle or you can drill and tap and install grease fittings.

[DaraSue]

Thanks, guys. I think mine are probably still the original ones , b/c I don't think the seller replaced them and I'm 99% sure the original owner didn't since AFAICT he didn't do much of anything else. I got the cheap standard grease gun from Autozone but I don't think it came with an extender, so I guess I need something like this: http://www.ebay.com/itm/like/4008492...&ul_noapp=true ? Is there a special nozzle I need or are Zerk fittings just the standard so anything that doesn't say it's for something else should work?

(I'm probably just going to wuss out and take it back to the shop to make the mechanic take another look at it because I wanted to leave for Chicago tomorrow and don't want to accidentally explode the boots or something, but I'd still like to know for future reference.)

[Nicholas R]

Any standard grease gun should fit.

The boots won't explode. All that will happen is that a tiny bit of grease will begin to ooze out on either the top or bottom. When this happens, stop adding grease.

[DaraSue]

I went back to the shop and had him take another look at it and he said that it looked like they'd been replaced relatively recently and the boots were full of grease so I didn't mess with them any more. The wheels haven't fallen off yet so that's a good sign...

[DaraSue]

Update: it was easier to see the grease fittings with the wheels off and the car up in the air yesterday.

Lower, on the underside: IMG_20170614_151412.jpg

Upper, on top: IMG_20170614_153221.jpg