Hi,

Its almost time for me to grease the lower bearings on my Santa Cruz Nomad again. Normally I can get a little bit of grease into the bearings but most of it just oozes back out of the Santa Cruz grease gun instead.

Am I doing anything wrong or do I need a better grease gun for the job?

Cheers, Zac.

It’s a hateful job, done mine last night.
Supplied grease gun has a habit of not releasing from the zerk nipples.
Have read stories of nipples been pulled out of the lower linkage.
The end of the grease gun can be unscrewed, figure 2 gives you details.
http://www.santacruzbicycles.com/tech/blurlt2_tech.php

I take it this is the same gun/nipple as my Blur and I can’t say it’s ever been a problem. Are you tightening the grease gun onto the nipple before squeezing?

Never had a problem – 5 second job on my Nomad.

As steveneive says – make sure you undo the greasegun before jamming it onto the nipples or you’ll snap them out. The two parts that undo don’t actually look like they are supposed to come apart but they do.

Ease onto nipple, finger tighten, squeeze, untighten. Job done.

Having a nightmare of a time myself and there are loads of posts around saying the same thing and others I know have had problems. The problem being the grease gun is just cheap rubbish (for such an expensive frame!).

Myself it took a hell of a lot of effort to get the knurled part undone in the first place. Needed soaking for ages in 3-in-1 and a serious vice grip.

Finally done that and now following the exact instructions and same as above, the grease just comes out of the knurled cap, not the bearings. Problem I can see is if I don’t tighten enough it’ll come out the gun, and too tight the cap comes off the nipple slightly and again comes out the gun. Can’t find a way to make it stay fully on the nipple and be tightened up.

Looking at various Cruz dedicated forum threads, I may follow their advice – chuck in the bin and get a proper gun.