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Yeah, OK, so apparently I fail at grease guns.

When my granddad passed away and Grandma came to live with us, we cleaned out her house and garage, put some stuff up in a garage sale, and bought some tools from her (Granddad was a carpenter by trade and had many tools). I got one of his large grease guns, the kind that takes a 14-oz. cartridge. I didn't have one of this size, only a smaller one, and this type builds a lot more pressure, which is great for ball joints with Zerk fittings that have frozen up.

One day, the grease gun stopped working. I took it apart I don't know how many times, tried different cartridges, worked the plate that goes into the cartridge back and forth, and nothing seemed to make it work. It wouldn't pump grease more than two or three strokes before it started to pump air, no matter what I did. I could feel air moving out of the end of the hose, but no grease came out.

Finally, the other day, I decided I'd had enough, and I went to the hardware store and bought a new grease gun. I didn't buy a hose for it, because the old one had a hose in good condition. When I put a wrench on the hose to take it off of the old gun, the fitting seemed to give way *very* easily. I thought that was strange, since I think those fittings use pipe threads, and screwed it all the way out.

I decided, just for entertainment, to clean the threads on the fitting on the hose and screw it back into the old grease gun very hard, and see what would happen. I did so, and it screwed in maybe 1/8" farther than it had been when I removed it. I thought that was even more strange than how loose it had been, so I tried it out...

... and lubricated the entire front suspension. It didn't act up, not even once. It had strong pressure on all the fittings.

So apparently the fitting for the hose was just loose enough to let pressure out!

So I'm taking the new, unused grease gun back to the hardware store to get my money back. Granddad's old gun is still good for a while, apparently.