VCCA Home Forums TECHNICAL - 1945 AND EARLIER 1933-1936 Alemite grease fitting tool I made

Beats a pliers or channel lock. Made from a piece of Ruger pistol barrel and a 1/4" steel rod.
Doug

Now that is a way cool tool!

That looks like a prime tool. However, I use a 6 point 7/16 socket. Fits perfectly on the pins and much easier to use particularly in tight places.

You mean maybe 5/8"? 7/16" certainly won't fit over the pins, the body is 7/16"

Doug

Here's the tool that I made for these fittings.

Cheers, Dean

My initial tool was probably going to look similar to yours, but then I thought of the barrel stub, so i used it.

So far it has fit on every alemite fitting on the car. I think i found them all. I discovered I needed to tighten most every fitting, as if the grease gun had any pressure retained, the fitting would want to unscrew with the grease adapter, which was a hassle as i had to unscrew the adapter from the grease gun to relieve the pressure.

Doug

Were these Alemite fittings only used on pre-1938?

Seem to recall Rusty having these on his 37 but all my fittings are the style that have been around 60+ years I suspect...

Hi Tim,

My '37 has the conventional ball shaped grease fitting with a check ball that the end of the grease gun snaps over. Most of the time I call these "zerks".

I do not know when Chevrolet switched from the fitting with cross pins to the ball type.

What really makes things confusing is that Alemite makes many types of fittings. Their current catalog shows 2 sizes of straight "Pin Type Fittings" on page 26.

Alemite Catalog

I think that 1933 was the last year that the "Alemite" double pin fittings were used.

Research many years ago came to the conclusion that the switch from the pin type to ball type grease fittings was during the '34 production year. As with many other changes no definitive date documentation has been found. Besides it is sure that each assembly plant made the change at a different time.

If someone has some extra time it would be great to prepare a list of changes by year or "ca". Example switch from slotted screws to phillips on trim parts. Grease fittings, safety glass, clutch head screws and many others can be done.

The July 1933 Service News states that the "new"
type grease fitting has entered production.

Good find Gene. Looks like near the end of 1933 production for the change instead of '34.

No, it was in mid 1933 production. Probably around May or June.
The Service News was always a day late when a production change was made.
My Info. indicates the1934 came out in Dec. and the last know 1933 serial number was Oct. 1933.