KIA Optima chassis lubrication

I have looked underneath the car and it is Zerkless. If there are lube points please let me know where they are. Thanks!

ihss wrote in news:4cdf306c-2974-47a3-aa49- snipped-for-privacy@f30g2000vbf.googlegroups.com:

You have none at all. Your balljoints are "lubed for life", meaning they are lubed for their entire lifetime.

What is their "lifetime"? Why, their lifetime ends when they fail, of course. Circular is as circular does...

Fret not, though. Cars in general have been Zerkless since, what, 1985? What was your last car?

No chassis lube. You're supposed to replace stuff instead of maintaining it these days.

I know it feels really weird to finish the oil change in ten minutes and feel like you ought to be doing something else but can't...

--scott

Wipe the battery down with a clean rag, see if you can find any oil seepage, and clean all the windows. Lube all hinges. If you still feel you need a grease fix, repack the wheel bearings. I usually just get a couple cheeseburgers.

--Vic

This is always a good idea every oil change. I usually check the battery water if it is a 'serviceable' battery. Oiling the hinges helps keep the sagging doors away.

Even that task is gone on many vehicles. Most FWD cars have 'sealed for life' hubs front and rear. If the rear bearing goes bad, you replace the whole assembly. Same for the front wheel bearings that the CV axles ride in. No maintenance, once they start howling or making louder noise on a corner than they do going straight it is time to pull the carrier, press the old bearing out and press a new one in.

Then again, a couple "$6 burgers" from Carl's Junior can be your grease fix just as well.....they do have some damn good burgers over there.... :-)

Chris

Some of the ball joints and tie-rod ends used to have a plastic cap pressed in where the zerk would normally go. On those it is a piece of cake to remove the plastic plug and screw a grease zerk in.

Chris

Please, when you reply with absolutes, or guestimates of absolutes, could you say "asian cars" when doing so? Note smiley --> :-)

You can spend 10 seconds resetting the maintenance interval light if it makes you feel better.

Toyota MDT in MO wrote in news:v3e6m.8044 $ snipped-for-privacy@flpi145.ffdc.sbc.com:

You're absolutely right.

I was at the local pick-a-part yesterday and spotted an early honda prelude, 1980 I think. That thing had 3 maintenance 'lights' on the speedo, oil change, tire rotation, and air filter if memory serves me right. We also saw(and this will make you proud....) a recently deceased 1972 Toyota something......with a carbed 1600 engine/points ignition. Odometer didn't have a 100,000 mile digit so who knows how many times it has rolled....

Chris

Toyota MDT in MO wrote in news:v3e6m.8044 $ snipped-for-privacy@flpi145.ffdc.sbc.com:

By the way, do you know what cars are still, uh, "Zerkful" these days?

Some domestic cars and trucks, at least "since 1985". I could probably rattle off a few, like some Chrysler cars (even FWD), GM trucks, etc, but I really can't remember the specific models well enough to accurately state them. Others could chime in with info on their personal cars if you really need to know more.

On Sat, 11 Jul 2009 21:18:47 -0700 (PDT), Hal wrote:

Didn't know that. But I've never had a wheel bearing go bad, and only remember repacking the ones on my '64 Bug. And the last time I replaced a ball joint or tie rod end was on a Chevy G20 van at least 25 years ago. Have replaced struts and coils. But it's good practice to get the cars on the rack occasionally and have a suspension pro muscle it around to look for wear, and I always have it checked before my yearly road trip. Had an upper ball joint fail on a '67 VW Squareback back in '74. Doing about 35mph on a city street. I was lucky it happened next to an empty bus stop, just past a line of parked cars. Car pulled right in there, right wheel cocked inward. All I could do was stand on the brake. My fault, as I had felt some looseness over bumps for a while and didn't check it. Had it towed home and fixed it up on the street. Pickle fork was good enough for that, but when I did the G20 I was lucky my brother was over at the house. He was a pro mechanic, and laughed when I went after a ball joint with a pickle fork. He grabbed a 15 pound sledge and showed me how it was done on that van. Anyway, since the Squareback incident I've been averse to loose suspensions. Thing is, my '97 Lumina has started feeling something like that Squareback felt like over bumps, but without the rattling noise. My kid, who does suspensions for a living, checked it out and said it needs struts, not ball joints. We'll see pretty soon.

--Vic