Grease fittings

"weight savings" is probably the official excuse 😂 

because it isn’t a peterbuilt 18 wheeler, it doesn’t take that long to properly disassemble clean inspect and regrease  your linkage and swing arm bearings. 

Because assholes still wouldn't maintenance the damm things.

I cant get guys to swap air filters but once a decade 

I had a brand new 1984 KX125 that had zerks on the link, great bike!

No future sales in making things last….planned obsolescence 

Squishing grease out of the seals doesn’t properly remove the dirt grime and old grease from the bearing. To properly do the service you need to remove the bearings (yes a pain in the ass) clean the old grease out and reinstall with fresh grease, only takes about an hour with practice. 

My wife's ttr225 has grease zerks, way easier to service than my yzf's. 

You can install your own grease fittings.

Bonus points for ktm owners when the needles fall out of the swingarm bearings and you spend the next 2 hrs looking for them, see the gap in the needles and assume you lost some, order a new bearing for the needles and find out the new bearing has a gap in the needles…..😂in all seriousness….. if you don’t use a pressure washer often the grease will easily go the 20-30 hrs in between suspension service….which is when I grease my chassis. 

These are competition motorcycles, not farm machinery. If they came out with a bike built like my Massey Ferguson 50 I'd buy something else.

Reach much ?

Feel free to Correct me if I'm wrong but....

If you drill and tap a zerk fitting on the swingarm , linkage or knuckle then  i don't think the greass has a path to get inside the bearing and lube the needles.

Wouldn't it be on the backside  behind the bearing ?

I had thought long and hard about doing it but I couldn't see how it would work as intended.

I know a company called iron cross (or something close to that) used to sell a swingarm axle with a zerk on one end and it had holes spaced at the 4 swingarm bearings. You would pump grease and fill the axle and  allow grease to lube the bearing and needles from the inside but the price around $200.

Thought about modding a stocker but never got around to it.

edit**

Attached Pic of a Tusk ktm pds shock bolt with built in zerk and weep hole to show what I'm talking about.

I had one of those non-ktm huskys around the early 2000s. Had I think one grease zerc on the bell crank (the part with 3 pivots). It did a really good job of pushing the seals out of one pivot and not really getting grease to the other 2.

I disassembled my entire bike to bare frame last night in 2 hours. 

Yes I see where you're coming from, however, in my experience the grease fittings do extend bearing life by more than double.

Pumping the grease in to the cavity creates a slight pressure, the grease has to go somewhere and will fill any empty space. 

Or, could be that refilling with grease creates a barrier to reduce water intrusion to the bearing.



 

Glad I'm not the only one lol 

Lol 😂 that’s funny I know some who do that’  it irritates me as well. Me on the other side I rather skip a puddle. Because of the mess 🤷‍♂️

In South Africa we call them nipples..."Grease Nipples"....we are happier mechanics for that...jus saying..

Years ago someone was selling drilled and taped linkage bolts w grease fittings that had ads in MXA ….. they didnt last long so they probably were not selling 

So 2 hours to be half way done and that doesn’t include the greasing…