So, after 30 years my old grease gun was getting in rough shape. When you retract the plunger there was a little notch in the cap that you hooked the plunger into to keep it retracted, and that was getting worn, so the plunger wouldn't stay back and it would ooze grease all over the place.
So took the plunge and bought a new one from Canadian Tire, known locally by many names, such as Crappy Tire, Scrappy Tire, etc. Loaded up a new cartridge, and proceeded to the garage to grease the mower deck. I cleaned off the fitting, and connected the new gun - the nozzle end was a tad snug going on, but nothing unusual. Considering my old one was used a lot, I wasn't concerned that this one was slightly tighter.
Greased up the bearing housing, and then went to remove the gun - no dice, it wasn't coming off the fitting. Struggled with it for a good 15 minutes, and decided that some persuasion was required. Got out a hammer, and gave the gun a firm tap away from the housing, and it popped off okay, at least I thought it did:
It pulled the goddam fitting right out of the housing!
😡🤬
So I had thankfully not thrown the old grease gun out yet, so I swapped the nozzles and took this one to the basement to try to get the fitting back out. Tried prying with two old chisels, but it was not coming out. I ended up sticking this in a vise, and the using vise grips on the fitting, and hammering it quite hard to get the fitting out of the nozzle.
This almost appears to be some sort of barbed fitting, rather than threaded, because those don't look like stripped threads:
So I managed to put the fitting back into the bearing housing, and cut the grass - the fitting was still there, so hopefully it will stay put, but I've never seen anything like this happen before. When what should be a 5 minute job takes you close to an hour...