Swivel Filled With Grease - Removing Excess

On my First Jimny, which were very ofter used in mud and water, i had a quite differenti procedure as far as CV and front swivels lubrication: in the First 6 months of life of the car i changed 2 times the kingpin bearings ... then i decided to keep the swivel balls full of grease ... once per month, i removed i bolt from top swivel pin, one from the bottom pin, put the grease gun into lower hole and pumped inside water proof grease until it comes out from the top hole.

7 more years of mud and water, never changed a front bearing or seal amore. I suspect that being always greased had been also the secret of the long life of the stock cv's even with 32" mud tires ...

The downside of this use, is that part of the grease leak into the axle oil, which needs more frequent changes, and also into the auto locking hubs, obstructing the vacuum lines ... good time to upgrade to manual locking hubs ...

It definitely appears that everyone has their own approaches and school of thoughts about battling the water and mud ingress into the swivel chamber, and also about what kind of grease to use while doing so.

And everybody is both right and wrong at the same time, because there is no universal solution for Jimnys.


My current "ongoing" issue is which grease to use for a CV joint (I am replacing it today). Ideally, I want it to be waterproof, and "compatible" for use in CV joints.
What type of grease should I use then? Petroleum based or synthetic? Based on lithium, calcium, sodium, graphite, copper, bull**it, horse**it?

I found one synthetic lithium and one sodium, but with scarce technical info:
www.abro.com/lg-990.html
www.abro.com/gr-303.html

I also found these two:
zeller-gmelin.de/view/product/23980?s=61...20C72DAC79B6DD1F892E
zeller-gmelin.de/view/product/21711?s=09...B5B3A199950F5A5465FD

Any ideas?
I used that Divinol Fett Top 2003 calcium grease for kingpin bearings, and I am thinking about using that Abro LG-990 synthetic lithium grease for the CV joint.


Also, when Martin says in his "Kingpin bearing replacement guide" that a knuckle should be filled with 100 ml of grease, does he mean the same kind of waterproof grease which is used for kingpin bearings?
Should those 100 ml of grease be just smeared around in the knuckle manually, or dumped on the bottom of the knuckle?
He also says "do not overfill". If I would put a lot more than 100 ml, I suppose that it would leak out through the swivel dust seals?

I was thinking the same thing about the 100ml of grease. Seems logical to me to stick to using the same CV grease that you put in the CV joint. Using some waterproof grease on the bearings makes sense especially on the bottom one where the water collects and as Martin suggests on the seal too before bolting that up. I'm going to keep my spheres regulary greased on the outside with a small amount of waterproof grease, it makes little sense to me to run them 'dry' otherwise why would suzuki sell the new seals preloaded with grease if it weren't intended to make a grease seal with the sphere most of the new rubber seal grease gets rubbed off when sliding it over the sphere so no harm in ensuring its got a regular bead of grease on it. I also think grease on the sphere becomes more important as the Jimny gets older and the sphere looses its paint and starts to rust a bit. End of the day guess it comes down to how you intend to use your Jimny too, having grease on the spheres will obviouly attract dust and dirt but I'd rather that than allow water in which equals rust

Regarding the maintenance of swivel "spheres", the contradictions is that keeping them greased can prevent water ingress inside the knuckles, but on the other hand attracts dirt and grit onto the spheres, which destroys the swivel seals more quickly (and then the water will come in even easier). On the other hand, if you keep the swivel spheres dry, dirt and grit don't collect nearly as much, but water will enter much easier. Also, the spheres will rust and chip off easier.

There is no win-win solution.


What I settled upon in the end, is to keep the swivel spheres dry, but spray them every now and then with the ubiquitous WD-40 spray (or equivalent). And also avoiding mud bogs and skiing through water.

I don't say what I found the optimal solution. I just decided on one of many "wrong" ones, and all are wrong if you look at it from a universal perspective.