[T3] Steering Box

[Jim Adney]

On 21 Jul 2021 at 15:46, EL PUERCO wrote:

> What is used for lubrication? Oil or grease.  My Clymer says a oeliquid
> transmission grease available at VW.

Until early '65, VW steering gearboxes had a pipe plug in the gearbox cover. 
Part of the regular maintenance of the car required removing that plug and 
topping up the gearbox with gear oil, same as the MT.

After early '65, the pipe plug was eliminated and the gearboxes came with 
"liquid grease" which was thought to be a lifetime lubricant, making regular 
checking unnecessary. It was thick, so it was much less prone to leaking out. 
This "liquid grease" probably became the lubricant of choice, even when 
rebuilding an earlier gearbox, but what "liquid grease" actually was, 
remained a continuing mystery to most of us. Until....  

A few years ago, one of our members, Tim Shreve, OKType3Tim on 
thesamba, dove into this and found "John Deere Corn Head Grease" as the 
ideal substitute. Apparently, it's made for lubricating a gearbox on corn 
pickers.

You can find his very long, and very interesting, samba thread here:

https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=660446&highlight=

You can buy this grease by mail if corn is not a common crop in PR. Just 
Google "John Deere Corn Head Grease". When I just did this, a CENEX 
product also came up; it's probably exactly the same thing, but with a 
different label.

My Google search also came up with recommendations for a pourable 
grease called "CNH pourable high EP oil." I don't know what that is, but it 
sounds interesting.


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Jim Adney, jadney at vwtype3.org
Madison, Wisconsin, USA
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