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At 09:11 AM 5/21/01 -0500, Jim Adney wrote: >On 20 May 2001, at 21:27, Dave Campen wrote: > > > "Zerk"......that's a nice word, but not as nice as "nipple"! > >I think it's actually a rather old brand name. I suspect that only the >old timers here recognize it. I've also heard them referred to as >Alemite fittings, another brand. Unfortunately "grease fittings" is >ambiguous, as there are a number of kinds, but only 1 is common. I don't know if this would fall into the "history" or "trivia" category, but here goes anyway. Alemite fittings are a different animal from the common zerk fittings. They're rather strange beasts and kind of bulky in comparison; a cylinder with a spring-loaded ball on the end and a couple of little nubs on the sides that are similar in principle to the nubs on 1156 lightbulbs. The grease gun attaches with a push-and-twist motion; alemite grease guns show up at swap meets from time to time, but not commonly (at least around here). I don't know when they stopped being commonly used, though all of my fathers 1920s-era Chevrolets had them. Had -- he's put zerks on all of them for ease of maintence since they're all fairly used drivers (he's been driving the roadser to work the last couple of weeks) instead of 100 point trailer queens. For what it's worth. ------------------------------------------------------------------- List info at http://www.vwtype3.org/list or mailto:help@vwtype3.org