One grease nipple  - Two Destinations  - By Owen McNeill

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Nipples, they have always fascinated me, especially the ones for applying grease to mechanical components. There were so many different designs fitted to early cars while an early Ford Prefect that I once owned had twenty two of them to attend to. When just a young fella, I can recall my Father telling me to always clean the dirt from the nipple before attaching the grease gun, continue applying pressure until you see new grease emerging from the joint and always wipe away the excess grease when finished.

Over the past thirty years, they have slowly disappeared from the motor vehicle but my MGB GT still has a few and this is about a simple modification that I did to the swivel pin grease ducts -- I always called them king pins but I'll use the term used in the manual. On each swivel pin there are three nipples, the top one for the upper stub axle bush, the middle one for the lower stub axle bush and a bottom one, you would think, for the wishbone pivot bush but when I applied grease to this bottom nipple, none came out of the wishbone pivot bush, it all came out around the lower stub axle bush.

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Remembering the distant advice from my Father, I dismantled the wishbone pivot expecting to find the hole in the bush not aligned with the grease duct but there was no obstruction and the joint was dry of lubricant.