Living as I do in a small town, the hub of a farming region in Western Cape province, South Africa one becomes adept at finding substitute products because many branded goods available stateside and in Europe are simply unavailable in SA. Or if they can be sourced here the sales agent for the product may be based hundreds of miles away and the cost of delivery by a courier service may turn out to be much greater than the cost of the product itself. All too often, it seems "the Bar eats you..."
Imagine how good it feels when occasionally you get to eat the Bar. For several hours during the past few days I have beavered away on-line to find suppliers of a suitable drive spline lubricant and a dielectric grease. I had drawn a blank locally and had almost resigned myself to ordering from a supplier in Jo'burg which would have meant incurring hefty delivery charges on top of the retail price of the goods. Then in a flash I had an "I think, therefore I am." moment.
Farmers use automotive machines...the machines use lubricants...which must be available locally. Yes! :2thumbup: I hauled myself over to the John Deere dealership faster than the proverbial speeding bullet.
I chatted for a while with the head mechanic at the dealership and discussed the applications I had in mind. His primary recommendation was for:
John Deere Multi-Purpose SD Polyurea GreaseHis team of mechanics use this for a wide range of applications including lubricating drive splines, lubricating o rings and brake applications where it's important to prevent water ingress. It come pretty close to being a truly universal grease.
If a requirement of the grease is to operate in a very low temperature environment (not the case in SA) then he would put his money on another JD grease:
Multi-Purpose Extreme Duty Synthetic GreaseThis is perhaps the ultimate all-in-one grease; as well as being able to cope with the demands of 'extreme duties' it is also a dielectric grease and can therefore be used to protect electrical connections from unfavorable elements. It is, however, about 3 times the price of JD Multi-Purpose SD Polyurea Grease (JDMPSDPG).
Wishing to minimize my carbon footprint (what a great excuse for meanness) I bought a tube of JDMPSDPG with the intention of lubeing the final drive splines of my K75S this weekend. With the backing of the worldwide JD organization behind it, I have every confidence in the product to do its duty.
The relevant link is:
https://jdparts.deere.com/partsmkt/document/english/pmac/8180_fb_GreaseSpecialMultiPurpose.htm
