MG Car Repair: steering rack lubing, chassis lube, vent holes

Question
The manual states; apply the grease gun filled with oil(S.A.E 90 gear oil) to the nipple on the steering rack and give it 10 strokes only. Not having a gun that holds 90 oil,I have been using a grease gun filled with chassis lube grease and pumping it 10 times. Is this wrong?
                      Al

Answer
Hi Al,
Yes, it is wrong as chassis grease is too thick, especially in cold weather. It is suppose to be 90w oil. The chassis grease will only lube the area that the grease went in at and will starve the rest of the rack for lube. A standard oil gun with a pump trigger was all you needed and just remove the screw and put a small piece of rubber hose over the end of the nose of the oil gun and place the tip of the oil gun into the hole and hold the hose tight against the rack and operate the trigger pump of the oil gun. That's what we did and it worked well.

I worked in several MG dealerships back then and never seen the pump that BMC and BLM talked about. They may have them in England but I never seen one in the US.

You need to get some oil in the rack if you have pumped grease in it. Put some 70w to 90w oil in it so the rest of the rack gets some lube. If you put too much in, it can't hurt anything except leak out into the boots and if the vent holes were placed correctly the excess will just leak later on. The only thing it can do is spot your driveway and if you are worried about that you have no business with an MG as they all leak oil. Everyone who loves MGs, learns to accept it and love the spots too.
Howard