Mixing Grease

[CFranks]

Hi All,

I'm about to grease my chassis before getting it back on the road for the season and am trying to figure out what kind of grease to use. My challenge is I bought this as an unfinished build many years ago and i'm not sure what was used previously on the components he greased, nor what the alignment shop used when I took it in for alignment. I have royal purple synthetic in my gun which I used on the tie rod ends. I've read that mixing different types of greases is not a good thing. Is there any guidance on what I should do? Am I good just to go to town with royal purple everywhere and assume it will flush out the old stuff? Am I overthinking this (usually the case)? If not, what would the experts do and is there a better grease to use in this case?

Thanks,
Craig

[Railroad]

Read or saw, long ago that soap base and petro base greases do not like each other. It seems the mix would cause the mass to harden. I do not recall seeing or using any soap base grease.

[NAZ]

You are not over thinking this -- you are right to question grease compatibility. I spent about 15-years as an engineer for Anheuser-Busch and working closely with Mobil tribologists and lubrication engineers and quite an education on lubrication. As Railroad said, there are incompatibility issues with mixing greases as thickening agents do not always play nice with each other. But, for your chassis lubrication points it is pretty easy to switch over from an unknown lube to a new spec lube. It's basically a flushing of the old. Here are some links to help you understand and you will find a procedure in these nuggets of info on how to swap over to a new grease. Everything you wanted to know about grease but were afraid to ask:

https://www.mobilindustrial.com/IND/English/Files/tt-grease-compatibility.pdf
(https://www.mobilindustrial.com/IND/English/Files/tt-grease-compatibility.pdf) https://www.machinerylubrication.com/Read/31067/grease-mixing-risks
(https://www.mobilindustrial.com/IND/English/Files/tt-grease-compatibility.pdf) https://www.machinerylubrication.com/Read/882/mixing-greases
(https://www.machinerylubrication.com/Read/31067/grease-mixing-risks) http://knowhow.napaonline.com/greasy-situation-can-you-mix-grease/ (https://www.machinerylubrication.com/Read/882/mixing-greases)