Rednroll

There in lies the problem in my opinion. I take my JK into a local shop for oil changes where they lube my joints while doing the oil change. For the typical shop person lubing joints, you have everyone's else's boot where you fill it until you start to see grease coming out and then you have Synergy's boot which needs special attention to not overfill as you noted. So both of my slinky springs were popped off due to the shop over filling as you mentioned. To get the springs out from around the joint and re-seat them over the boot, I had to use a small pick to be able to fish and grab the spring, then while I'm grabbing that spring with the pick, the boot shifts and gets easily punctured by the point of the pick I was using. So now that thin rubber boot has a couple Swiss cheese holes in it, oozing out grease. Any of my other joint boots are made of a much more thicker walled tougher material which I would not have been able to puncture the boot with the small pick, without applying deliberate force.

As an engineer who has worked on designs, when I look at that design it is apparent to me that Synergy hires engineers fresh out of college who don't yet have the background experience in knowing the reasons why 99% of the other designs out there use a particular type of tried and true boot design. At the time, they likely thought they were smarter than everyone else with their slinky spring and thin walled boot design that needed to be there as well to accommodate the spring's function. A more experienced engineer would have had the insight to identify these type of secondary effects prior to going to production. I'm sure that similar kind of lack of design experience is the reason for their poorly designed ball joints that set you on your current path of ball joint frustrations. In engineering, I'll be the 1st to admit that we often have these types of oversights where we end up focusing too much on solving one problem, but that solution ends up causing other problems. This is the reason why we keep an ongoing "Lessons Learned" which stays within the engineering group, so that when we do hire a new engineer, that type of background knowledge gets passed down. We also have design reviews where the new engineers have to review their designs with the engineers who have much more experience where the intent is for the more experienced engineers to knock holes in the design to further challenge the less experienced engineer in identifying potential oversights in their design. I would have envisioned that design review going something like this.

New Engineer: I decided to use this slinky spring design to hold the boot in place.
Experienced Engineer: How did you confirm that spring applies enough force to hold the boot in place?
New Engineer: With the standard boot wall thickness and material typically used, it would not allow enough give in the boot, so I therefore decided to use this thinner and more flexible material for the boot, so the tension of the spring could apply enough force and cause the boot to collapse in place and be properly seated on the joint.
Experienced Engineer: With that thinner/more flexible material of the boot, what happens if a mechanic overfills the grease into the boot?
Experienced Engineer: With the thinner/more flexible boot material, what happens to that material when a mechanic uses a sharp edge metal tool such as a screw driver or pick like is often used for installation and removal?
Experienced Engineer: How will that boot material last over time after being exposed to heat, cold, water, salt, and other common environmental elements the boot will be exposed to?
New Engineer: ???
Experienced Engineer: Here would be my suggestions, please go back to the drawing board and take these things into consideration in your design and we'll have another review once you addressed those concerns.
New Engineer: Thank you for sharing your insight, I hadn't considered these concerns previously.
Experienced Engineer: You're welcome, it's a nice innovative design but without addressing these concerns it does currently seem to have some short comings.

So yeah.....with my experience, it's difficult for me to defend Synergy in allowing this design to go out the door.

ConroeJK

hornetman

hornetman

resharp001

Revisiting the whole Lock-N-Lube above.....I did finally buy one a while back. IDK, I must be an idiot, cuz I still get grease coming out the sides of the Lock-N-Lube. I mean, it does stay on better (it's not wobblin' round on the zerk), but I do get grease coming out the 4 spots where the metal arms that grab and pull the zerk (or whatever you want to call them) are separated.

Rednroll

Odd, I purchased a 2nd lock-n-lube end for a $10 HF grease gun (LNL fitting cost more than the gun) since I liked it so much on the Lumax LX-1123 gun I got. I've had no problem with it on either of those guns. What I found is that it helps after you've clipped the LNL onto the zerk, to give it a slight right/left spin, then a minor tug to ensure it's properly seated on the zerk. I did experience what you described the 1st time I tried it and learned I had the LNL clamped too far up on the zerk nipple.

I still don't know how well my new grease guns are going to last the test of time, since I've only used the Lumax twice and the HF once but so far they've worked great, loaded cartridges easy and I really like the LockNLube connector. I loaded the Lumax with red grease and the HF with marine grease. I also put plumber's tape on the fittings of both guns. So far, I've done all my joints twice with the Lumax which included tie-rod, drag-link, ball joints, and my RC adjustable lower control arms.

resharp001

Thx. I'm sure it's user error. I felt like I fiddled around with it several times, but maybe I'm just trying to clamp it too far on as you noted here. Will focus on that next time I pull it out.

spartan99

Rednroll

Not that I've ever been to one but this thread kind of felt like an AA meeting to me. We just needed the 1st person (me) to step up and admit we had a problem we weren't very proud of admitting.

I haven't used my new guns very much, but this time around I put plumber's tape on every fitting and got the LockNLube ends. So far so good with loading and using them. Just waiting on the test of time at this point.

resharp001

I'd report back that I've been backing the piston off when done with the grease guns and putting them in my PVC storage gizmo like Seizure pictured above. The crap still leaks out the bottom of the guns. Regardless of ambient temps, I just have a mess every time. I resort to shoving some paper towels down in the storage tube to catch it.