I have had Nortons for over 50 years but never managed to find a grease gun that fits the nipples on a Dommy. Its time I solved that issue. What am I missing?.
They're designed for the old type Pom Pom grease guns.
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The one I would like to…
The one I would like to service is on the brake lever ,and that is extended to retain the lever,so no modern fitting . Ah well.
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The original prewar type…
The original prewar type without the locking ball seem to be unavailable anywhere. I'm keeping mine on the old 16H for appearance sake. When I put the bike back on the road a couple of years ago I took each one out in turn and put a modern one in so I could pump the dried out greaseways clear (girder forks). Then put the old ones back. A scrap of cotton cloth (old shirt) then seals the connection and allows the originals to work fine.
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Trick with cloth?
Ian Soady said he hasn't managed to make the cloth trick work (nor me, in the days when I worried about such things).
Is there some special knack, beyond simply interposing a layer of material between nipple and gun? Does state of the material matter (e.g. new vs. threadbare, thread count, etc.)?
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Not really a special knack I…
Not really a special knack I know of. I usually use a small square piece of old poly cotton shirt material! It does need the greaseway not to be dried up - hence the use of a new type nipple with hand lever type pump action to get the old ones free on a bike not used for over 25 years - (but kept inside a house for much of that time...).
To be fair - a fair bit of grease tends to escape when I grease the 16H forks. But most gets in where it should go. Without it the grease goes more or less anywhere.
Whichever type of nipple, the old push-piston gun will work. They do have the advantage of coming in lots of sizes. You can get miniature ones small enough to fit in a tool box for next to nothing at Kempton or similar.
Biggest problem I have is re-filling the things. Sometimes it's no problem (just a bit messy), but sometimes they seem to get an airlock and won't work at all. I'd like to know how to solve that problem.
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Which, in my experience, never fit properly and you end up with grease everywhere. Old timers suggested that a bit of cotton rag between the nipple and the nozzle worked but never for me.
I replace them with modern type nipples that current grease guns will lock ("hook") onto. Not original but I suppose if you really wanted to you could fit the new type to grease then refit the old ones for "originality".
1/4" BSF thread if I remember correctly.