Best High Temperature Grease

Can anyone recommend the best high temperature grease. Just bought a stump grinder and wanted to do it right from the start. Thank you. Greg

For what? The wheel bearings? The equipment forum would be better.

For our cutterwheel and the rest of the machines we use Lithium grease. Give me a coupla minutes and I will get you the name.

Works for us!

Copper based, but not for bearings (origionally made for furnace doors) or Graphite based. Lumberjacks 'Lithium' suggestion is the most common for bearings, but is lithium soap based, melts and runs out at lower temps. than the others. Really depends on application as already mentioned.
Regards.

The Red Lithium complex greases are better for heavy loads at higher temperatures than standard Buttery yellow Lithiums. White Lithium is a different animal for use in wet environs(like boat trailer wheel bearings) and has some compatibility issues with other greases Lithium with moly or graphite is black but compatible with red , blue or buttery lithiums. It you are looking for brand name Mystic has an excellent rep amongst miners and heavy equipment operators- A good grease without snake oil claims or prices. Really for chippers and stumpgrinders I believe that the biggest factor is greasing frequently. Even cheapo stuff does well if it is in there. The really cheap lithiums can run at 265 degreesF-I' ve never seen them run out like water except when a bearing has "blown". However I prefer higher melting point grease that is rated for heavier loads. I Use Mystic JT6 on the Stumper and Red (foget which number ) on the chipper. I'd use the red stuff everywhere but the JT6 comes in mini tubes and A mini grease gun is what I carry on the trucks that haul the stump grinder

Justin, whats a mini grease gun?

We use red lithium, still aint made it to the truck to look at what brand. We use it on everything on the grinder. It comes in a tube about 1.5"x12", around a pound and a half to two pounds I am guessing.

Mobil Moly 50 grease is good for off road equipment.It is for extreme pressure and is water resistent.

I use the moly grease as well as per mfg specs on the rayco.. Moly stands for something like molybdium. I believe it was developped by Buckminster Fuller.

Dan'l, Molybdenum Disulfide. The particles will bond to steel but not to one another so it makes a good dry lubricant or will enhance the lubricity of grease.

Carl. A mini grease gun is... a Miniature grease gun... as in.... small.-Takes 6 ounce tubes and is operated with only one hand-very convenient for lubing a grinder but the grease costs more in the smaller packaging.

Our RG85 can take 30 pumps of grease every couple hours. Dont think the mini is for me Is it also called the "fun size"?

Sounds like it is good though for getting in small places. Could you fill it with grease like on a regular gun and save money?

Lumberjack said:

Our RG85 can take 30 pumps of grease every couple hours. Dont think the mini is for me Is it also called the "fun size"?

Sounds like it is good though for getting in small places. Could you fill it with grease like on a regular gun and save money?

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Carl, Yes you could but I go for the convenience of the tubes-The Mini and 3 extra tubes take up little space in the tool box. The RG12 only needs about 8-10 pumps to squirt clean grease on both bearings(4-5 each).

Over here I use Castrol High Temperature Bearing grease, it's blue colored.

You know, a lot of the carry on about greasing is BS!

Think about this, how often do you grease the front wheel bearings of you car? Probably never, only when the bearing wears out.

SET up 1/ Many modern bearings are sealed, yet have grease holes so people can pump more of the stuff in, but the grease cant get out ... and then there's more bearing failures ... and ironically the owner who's been through this makes darn sure it doesn't happen again and pumps more grease more often .... another bearing craps it ... oh darn bearings are junk, I look after them so well!

Set up 2/ Or the bearings may not be sealed but they are enclosed in a sealed unit somehow. What happens here is the grease gets out of the bearing but not the housing. But over a short period of time the grease that's escaping from the bearing can't as there's a wall of grease. Continual pumping of grease pressurizes the housing's seals' and breaks them.

Set up 3/ Or worse still, and this is true, the grease track only goes into the bearing housing and not into the bearing ... and if you think that a spinning bearing sucks grease in and not spit it out then you need a shrink.

So, it pays to know what your set up is, and I haven't greased my Dosko's bearings for over a year and they're fine, the previous year I went through 3 sets. They're sealed bearings and by pressurizing the seals with an overflow of grease you blow them, then crap can and will get in.

On my Kanga stump grinder there is no grease nipples. The older models had them but guess what, it's set up 3, a waste of time. You pack the bearings with grease on installation and forget about them till they're blown.

Cutter wheel RPM on a RG50 or RG 85, I bet it's around 1400rpm, figure out what your car is doing, wont be much different.

i love the set up 3 ekka,everyone watches it come out the side of the bearing when really the track is blocked.i can get the 4 bearings on mine for $100 and fitted for another $100 so i dont pay that much attention to them.

Ya the link belt pillow block bearings on the Rg super 50 are sealed. If you pump too much grease in, it blows the seal... I got around 370 hours on my first set, but didn't know not to blow the seals. Then the rayco dealer in tampa didn't tighten the top drive sprocket, which they replaced and that tore up the new belt at 425 hours, so the operator pumped grease in the bearings until he blew the seals, after I had specifically told himnot to put more than 7 pumps in. The parts guy at a commercial bearing place was really really surprised that rayco suggests greasing the bearings everyday... I wonder about that myself, since they are sealed. But he said the mfg must know what the machine needs.

murphy4trees said:

But he said the mfg must know what the machine needs.

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Now that's a laugh. Don't assume they know much at all. That's why there are specialist places that actually re-engineer all sorts of things for better performance etc.

When I bought new belts for my Kanga grinder the guy asked if I'd like the really top notch expensive belts or the cheapies ... I went for the cheapies, he asked why ... because there is no adjustment and you have to force them on with a screw driver ... it's triple belts too ... so the end one has to go through a fare stretch by the time it's in position.

The belt guy said soon as you do that you break the fibres inside the belt ... I know but the manufacturer has built it this way, I go through belts every 20hours! Luckily they're only $18 each, and real fast to fit.

I have a favourite saying, in all big companies there's no shortage of stupidity.

Yesterday, twice we had to pull the shoot off a Vermeer BC1400 because the geniuses couldn't provide a little hatch that opens on the side of the shoot so you can un block it.

The infeed roller shaft's of the Vermeer BC1000 were breaking all the time, they didn't do a recall but waited for those that broke to come back in under warranty ... those that broke after had to pay for the new re-designed shafts. The problem was they machined a circlip grove into the shaft to hold a bearing in place, that groove became the snapping point ... now the shaft is bigger with a shoulder.

Have fun.

Ekka, gonna use you as an example of spending more to start is actually cheaper. Nothing personal, but I made an off the cuff remark that 10 grand was nothing, this is one reason why.

Your machine uses 48 bucks in belts every 20 hours. Our RG85 has 1700 hours on it. Assuming you could match our production hour for hour (highly impossible, no offense) you would spend $4080 dollars on belts alone. Now match up that our machine can do at least twice per hour more than yours (dont know what machine you have).

$10k is nothing. Nothing personal.

Check out shells line of aviation grease called Aeroshell. These are fantastic products. http://www.shell-lubricants.com/products/pdf/AeroshellGreases.pdf

Hey Lumberjack

I hear what you're saying but the point I was emphasising is how manufactures make mistakes, like having 3 belts and no adjustment. If and when the stumper grinder snuffs it I'll have to re-engineer the thing.

Over here an RG50 costs $55000, they don't even bother having a RG85 but I would guess that they'd be in the $85000 range.

This particular stump grinder that I have is part of a mini loader, an accessory. I've had it exactly a year now and have 120 hours on the loader and only 47 hours on the stump grinder. So as you can see if I did buy an RG50 etc I would be dead of old age and still not infront.

Plus I wouldn't be able to lift all those logs.

By the way, the loader cost $18000 and the stump grinder accessory $14000

Ekka your Kanga hauls ass! Theres somethings thats worth investing and others not. You have got to have work and be able to justify investing alot of money in arboriculture i think. Theres no point in having a expensive machine thats parked up in the yard half the time.

Ekka, I am thinking about getting a mini loader in the next year or so..

The point really wasnt at you, I was just making an observation. And MY GOD the prices over there!

im quite happy with my grinder a 1625 i paid 8.5k for it 14 months ago one main belt,a few bearings,its that real old model that had a winsconsin on it(it has a kohler now with 1000hrs (it must have alot of hours) in total i never, ever take it out without the teeth done.no way would i buy ANY heavy tree equipment new, l/j not having a go but is it a wise decision to spend more to do the job cheaper?

dont get me wrong if i had employees on a grinder it would be a rg50 or similar