oil cup to grease fitting conversion

[D2VERMONT]

I have become very dissatisfied with the oil cup system of lubricating the steering clutch release bearings. Ten years ago when my grandfather and I over hauled my D2 we put a good pair of used bearings in it. I religiously oiled them every time I started the crawler. So I was kind of surprised to see how bad they look now. When I was working on my fathers late model D2 it had a flexible grease hose instead of the oil cup system and the bearings on that machine were in excellent shape. After a couple of false starts I came up with a fairly simple solution. I picked up an eighteen inch flexible hose for a grease gun at the local parts store. I cut the hose in two pieces eight inches long. Using a knife I cut off incremental sections of the casing so that the cut end of the hose would fit snugly down inside of the tapered hole in the oil cup. After cleaning the inside of the cup I ruffed it up with a rat tail file and then slid the hose in to the cup covered with a generous amount of slow (5-15 second) setting super glue. It's a little crude but I think it's going to do the job and it was a lot easer than any of the other solutions that I could come up with.

[Old Magnet]

Seems like a good solution....I have used the various lengths of grease gun hoses (with fittings) where possible, such as the ball bearing type main clutch release bearing and the later steering clutch release bearings on the D4/D6.

Be interesting to see if the "glue in" version holds up.

[8C 361]

Cat used to offer a kit for this purpose. I know I put one in a 5U many years ago, It was quite affordable at that time. I am sure it would be exhorbidant today. As I recall the hose was threaded on one end where it went through the case to the grease fitting and had a banjo fitting on the other end that replaced the funnel on the bearing cage. It might be shown in the parts book. I don't have one handy.

Tom

[D2VERMONT]

I hope the glue in solution works. I guess If it is still working in thirty years I will know that It was a good Idea. I thought about checking into a cat replacement part But I think that this will work. I never would have tried it if it was a sealed bearing. The bearing is so wide open that I can't see how it could build up enough grease pressure to blow the hose out of the cup. So now I will just cross you fingers and try not to think about it.