Zerks?

[Melifluonze]

So, I placed my fragile body under the '67 New Yorker's big block yesterday, trusting my harborfright jack stands, and did an oil change. The oil that was in there was from... uh... maybe like early 2000's? I figured that's probably not something I wanted to run for too long. I noticed whoever put the last oil filter in cranked the sucker down hard. The gasket was stuck to the adapter. Also, the edge of the mating surface on the adapter has surface rust all around the outer edge. That sucks.

While there, I took inventory. Looks like I only have surface rust and in some places, still the original black whatever coating was on the undercarriage. No significant rust that I can see, and the exhaust is still all in one piece and good! I'm also surprised the rubber everywhere is still soft and supple, and the flexible brake lines seem OK. The trans and brake lines running back only have some slight surface rust in certain spots!

I think my knock is from bad shocks. Both front shocks are leaking all over the place, so they're probably history, and when I took that one turn that caused the boat to list, it probably brought the passenger side shock down past where it had been in... forever... The car has only been driven about 2 miles since 2011, and probably not at all for about 15 years before that!

I checked out the suspension parts. All the rubber booties are there, but no zerks!? There's something in each joint, like a little nut where the zerk should be. Really? No zerks? Can these little nuts be removed, and a zerk be put in? Any negatives to doing that? There's ~27K miles on the car right now. Everything is totally solid. I'd figure greasing it up a bit wouldn't hurt it after all, since whatever's in there is about 50 years old now...

What say the experts?

 

[commando1]

Can these little nuts be removed, and a zerk be put in?"
YES, absolutely.
"Any negatives to doing that?"
Putting in the wrong size Zerk.
Carefull when selecting Zerks. The threads all look alike. Especially when they are Chinese Zerks...
Take the threaded plug with you to the store and match it up with a correct fitting nut. Now you know the correct size Zerk fitting.

There's straight, 45°, and 90° fittings. Look at the location of where each fitting goes to select the style best suited to get at it with a grease gun.
Check the manual to check for all the grease locations, example: U-joints.

 

[rkrochen]

Over the years there has been a lot of front end parts that did not come with the Zerk fitting. Yes you should be able to remove the plug and install the grease fitting.