What is the use of greasing the fifth wheel so much if while coupling half of the goo gets scraped off by the trailer's edge, and the other half gets smeared all over the bottom of the trailer before the fifth wheel locking into the kingpin?

I poured a pound of grease on the fifth wheel plate, and after carefully backing and coupling, I checked the bottom of the trailer, there was grease everywhere except between the fifth wheel and the trailer.

 

You only need a little. Your handling goes to $hit when your fifth wheel gets too dry.

 

What I do is lower my airbags and back under the trailer until the fifth wheel is most of the way under the trailer. Then just air up the bags as you finish backing her in. Doing it this way most of the grease stays on the fifth wheel without being scraped off.

 

yea just a lil. when im dumping my sawdust sometimes il take stick and throw some of that clean grease back on there. i bet a pound would make a mess. i get those round cans at walmart and when my trailer is up in the air ill put some on with a stick and that lil can lasts several weeks

 

Your still going to push the excess out when you inflate your bags.
When you put grease on the 5Th wheel, concentrate on the inside section of the plate, and when you back under it will spread over the the rest of the plate...

 

This is also the standard procedure for Teflon Fifth Wheels. Not to prevent grease from getting on the trailer but to prevent the Teflon from being scraped off and damaged.

One needs to be very very attentive while executing this procedure. You can high hook very easily or bounce the kingpin off the fifth wheel and now have a real problem of the kingpin in front of the fifth wheel .. or worse push the nose of the trailer through the sleeper .... DOH! :x

 

What you want to do is put one glob on one of the "legs" of the fifth wheel and then another glob on the other "leg" (i will try to get a picture up ASAP)

This way when you back under a trailer the trailer will push the grease up to the front of the fifth wheel.

Don't put too much grease on.

And this needs to be done evertime you drop and hook to another trailer.

 

As somebody who worked as a maintenance mechanic for a lot of years, this sounds like the most logical way to do this. And I would imagine,, much like a bearing, too much grease is not a good thing.

 

apply grease to the rear half of the plate only, it will be spread forward during coupling

use a small piece of plywood to spread it around evenly

if the grease channels (machined grooves) in the plate are not full o' grease... fill 'em as well

as was already stated ; dump your air ride while backing under, and then switch it back to the run position once you are fully under the bolster plate

...too much grease simply means you're sick of seeing it all over the mid-section of your truck... mechanics will hate you when they're replacing that forward input u-joint or jack shaft

 

Yep simply put, this is your problem. It's not like icing a cake. =D