Grease nipples on inside of Defender door hinges

[Vogler]

Hi all,

It’s been a while since my last posting, didn't really have a lot to say, but I think the following might be of interest to some.

Since I always use too much words when writing, here's in one sentence what is more leghtily explained below: M6 DIN3405 grease nipples fit at the back of Defender hinges and it works.

The door hinges on our Td5 were due for replacement, and no way the new ones were to go on without adding measures to extend their life.

Oddly enough, it's only very recent that the channel 'Defender Mods and Travels' popped up in my YT feed, and just when I wanted to finally tackle the hinges (which had been lying around for two or so years already), his video on the very subject popped up so I was bound to put ball type nipples on the outside of the new ones.

Fortunately, all the grease nipples I had were too long. 'Fortunately' because when looking for shorter ones, I stumbled by chance on M6 "D-type" / DIN3405 flat funnel nipples which looked like they might fit at the back of the hinge. They’re used with a pointed tip on the grease gun.

Putting on the nipples is quite straightforward, nothing special here.

First I established the available space by sliding a wooden shim of the same thickess as the protruding hexagon head of the nipple into the closed hinge, and scribed the end of it, and then it's just a matter of aligning the nipple just short of the line, marking its axis, and to drill and tap the hole.

I drove out the hinge pin and separated the halves before drilling.

It's a tight fit, and in retrospect I might have installed the nipples a little more to the rear, more offset from the hinge pin. I needed to shorten the threaded end of the nipple so much that a couple of times the spring came out, I destroyed 4 nipples this way.

There’s plenty of space around the hinge pin to offset. The hinge looks like it is cast with a larger diameter hole after which inserts were pressed in.

The offset just might make a difference, chances are that now some of the nipple springs are kept in by just the flimsiest slither of metal.

I was very happy to see it work. The Pressol push type gun I used worked perfectly, there’s no grease spilling between the tip and the nipple. You can also see how the nipple grazed the paint as a sign of the tight fit.

I bought the push grease gun for the UJ's and at the time it already came with a pointed tip additional to the usual one for ball-type nipples. 12 003 is the item number for the separate tip, which has an M10x1 thread. I also found pointy tipped grease guns for chainsaws, but those machines I know nothing about. Without a doubt several people here do and can shed more light on it.

Hope it is of use to some.

Regards,

Joris

 

 

[Mo Murphy]

I do enjoy a nice nipple.

🤐

Mo