Hartzell propeller lubrication intervals

[Neal]

There are mixed answers on whether or not to lube the prop, Hartzell's guidance is pretty clear. So if you put an ounce of lube in each side every year, where is it going??? Is this something that finds its way out? Or is there simply plenty of room over 10+ years that you're not going to have an excess of lube?

 

[ve6yeq]

If I remember correctly, someone at TacAero mentioned to me that that the grease just ends up on the windshield

 

[Neal]

If I remember correctly, someone at TacAero mentioned to me that that the grease just ends up on the windshield

And that is exactly the underlying reason for this thread. The past few flights I've been trying to track down this "mist" on my windscreen. I was first thinking "I just did an oil change so it's probably blowing off the excess oil" to "I flew full rich as it was a short distance flight, maybe it's fuel blowing out" to finally asking a friend and learning that it's most likely the propeller grease and possibly a blown seal. I just pulled the spinner and inspected, there was a light coating of grease around the spinner base plate edges that seemed to be from some grease coming out I'm guessing from a zerk or something. It has finally subsided but sure got my attention.

I'm still going to follow the black and white from Hartzell but instead of 5 pumps per side I may drop the amount of grease to 3 pumps per side. I learned from Dave Embry's videos about the 5 pumps but the guidance is no more than 1 ounce per side of grease. So I then researched how much grease comes out of a grease gun per pump and it seems the consensus is 0.1 ounces. Of course you could measure it and probably should but it's yet another lesson learned and brief scare wondering if something was wrong. But this answers too why they say do it every 12 months which is probably because grease is escaping.

Thanks for the reply and confirmation of what I suspected. But still good to read chapter 6 of your Hartzell propeller manual and know what it says.