I have a rather stupid question.. Why do american made cars have grees fittings while foreign cars do not?

Do they not need greese?

foreign car makers prefer to make money... so they cut out a lot of things that aren't really needed as much.

Sure, american manufacturers put grease fittings all over the place (at least they used to). But most people don't lube things, anyways. So for the most part, that's wasted money.

The big 3 is catching on, though. Less and less of their stuff comes w/ fittings, and they're starting to do the "sealed for life" bit that the foreign makers have been doing for years.

Someone sent me a PM and said since I was a noob, they wanted me to ask them for them instead of them asking themselves. Yeah, that's the ticket.

So what's a grease fitting?

Noobie001

Wow...

But at least you had the balls to ask, so I won't laugh too much... There are a lot of people that act like they know things, when they don't. Those people are much more annoying...

Anyways, a grease fitting is a fitting on a moveable part, like a control arm, steering linkage, ball joint, etc. Basically, there's a pocket of grease in those types of parts. In the past, you would have a fitting on those parts, so you could add new grease, through the life of a vehicle. Helps keep the joint lubricated, and working properly.

But nowadays, car companies are sealing up these fittings, and saying they're, "Sealed for Life", which generally means they'll last around 100,000 miles, and then you'll have to replace them.

kudos to you for asking:



you can see the fiting sticking out the bottom of the arm... almost dead centier in the pic.

So it that what those Zerk things are?

Or are they for adding more potential grease fitting sites instead of replacing old ones?

Yeah, I have alot to learn about automobiles

Noobie001

If you do any regular maintenance of moveable parts and fittings on your truck, grease fittings or grease nipples or zerk fittings, whatever you want to call them, allow for hookup of a standard grease gun as a way to lubricate parts without disassembling them. Very good if you spend a lot of time in mud or water. Same principle as repacking your bearings after mud or water crossings. If you don't do either of these, you probably won't need them...but I'll leave it to the pros to answer that one...this is just my 2 cents. I like grease fittings on heavy-duty trucks (anything with a 350 or diesel), but never tried them on a Nissan. Glad you asked the question, I've been wanting to see pics.

Yep. "zerks" is just another name for a grease fitting. po-tay-toe, po-tah-toe... Makes no difference.

However, you can't just "add" on a zerk fitting, on a part that wasn't made for it. Drilling into parts that are permanently sealed w/ grease, can/will introduce lots of nice little metal shavings into the joint. AKA, you just put in metal sandpaper into your joint. So any advantage you would have gained by getting new grease in there, is more than compensated by the metal shavings.

Also, parts must be made for a fitting, because as you can imagine, drilling a hole into something weakens the part. So if it wasn't designed to have a hole there, you could end up stuck on the side of the road sometime, with a grenaded part.

THanks for the wonderful reading. I was always curious as to the reason. Still seem s odd to me not having them. I remember helping my dad on his old ford van. That freaking thing had about 15 fittings. All over the place. Me being little at the time i could crawl under and get the all. Ah thos were the days. To be young again.

My Land Cruisers have plenty of grease fittings... both the '74 and the '93...

Don't group all foreign made vehicles in one category...

Check the new Toyotas. They don't use grease fittings very often anymore, either.

new Land Cruisers do...

Of course Camrys, Siennas etc don't, they are built for the average america yuppie, 90% of whom have no idea what a zerk is. In this case a sealed maintenence free throwaway part makes sense. It doesn't on 4x4 trucks.