Trunnion Oiling

by Peter Zaborski, email:

plz at shaw.ca

(replace ” at ” with @).

The recommended lubricant for TR6 trunnions (steering swivels) is gear oil. Unfortunately, it is diffcult to fill the trunnions with the oil while the assembly is still on the car. There is a grease nipple on the trunnion (at the upper part) but typically using a grease gun loaded with oil results in a huge mess. An alternative is to use grease instead of oil but unless the trunnion is heated sufficiently to allow the grease to “melt” it will never flow far enough into the trunnion to do any good.

Here is a new approach to this task (original info courtesy of Odd Hedberg from Sweden). I obtained a Quicksilver brand grease gun from a Mercury Marine dealer which can be used to inject at high pressure Quicksiver gear oil from a tube which nicely mates to the gun. This results in no mess and no need to heat the trunnions to a high enough temp to melt grease (I thought grease was supposed to resist metling?).

The gun is sold as Quicksilver Grease Gun, part number C-91-37299 and cost is approxiamtely $20.00 Canadian. The oil I used is Quicksilver Gear Lube Super Duty in a 250 ml tube, part number 92-98780 and cost was $4.00 Canadian. Mercury Marine is a world wide brand of power boating eqiupment and should be available just about anywhere.

Here is a picture of the required equipment:

Peter Zaborski
76 TR6 (CF58310 UO)