GREASE LIQUEFIES

KitchenAid recommends you change your grease once a year! This is relevant to how often you use your machine. For those who have oil leaking from the Planetary Ring (the chrome ring) then you need to change your grease. The grease volume in the image below is typical of the factory application.

Not all greases are equal: Once upon a time, some claimed that the dark grease you see in the gearbox was not food safe. This was MicroLubrol™ Gear and Bearing Grease for Kitchen Mixers. I've not been able to confirm this. Now they use a H2 grease. NSF - (H2-specific lubricants are for machinery that doesn’t come in direct contact with food, such as a forklift. It is used in areas where there is no possibility of direct contact with food, beverages or pharmaceutical products.) There are 3 tiers of Food Grade Lubrication - H1, H2, H3. We think the white grease once used for the planetary gears was intended to be food safe, but in fact was probably a H2 grease.

Why all this detail, just to let you know that we use a NSF - class H1 grease in the gearbox. It is not uncommon for the grease in the gearbox to liquify and drip into the food. So a H2 grease, while considered a food industry grease, is not what you want dripping into your mixer bowl. So the current

W11200218 KITCHENAID STAND MIXER FOOD GRADE GREASE sold by the local KitchenAid spare parts outlet is a H2 grease. (update; it looks like the old H2 grease is going to be available again after December 2023).

How much to get the grease changed

The devil's in the detail!

WHAT'S INCLUDED?

We used to put the price up here to clean the gearbox and replace the grease and a picture of the finished product (see below). But it appears that our publishing the advantages of using our services, others are quick to copy/change their offering(s)! These upper and lower gearbox images clearly show the very limited amount of grease that has been applied. The image in the middle is a 125ml butter and that's still not the full amount recommended.

The picture of the grease below is not real. It's a representation of how much grease we typically apply. That gets you true H1 grease. I'm not sure of the actual amount the factory uses; it appears to be different almost every time. The other aspect that makes a big difference is where the grease is placed. Again the image below is not the actual placement.

There white grease in the image below is the H1 Food Safe grease once used for the planetary gears. When the MicroLubrol™ stopped being supplied, many repairer resorted to using the White grease. Great for making any leakage safe, but not so great it's lubricating/protection properties.

So, what we hope you get from this is that we will try to make sure you are getting the best outcome for your machine when you have your grease changed. If you have white grease in your mixer, then we recommend changing it earlier rather than later as it is not so great at lubricating, albeit Food Safe!

After the repair

The mixer will smell of grease/oil

WHAT COMES BACK

The mixer has had a bath... yay!!! Sounds refreshing; which it is for the mixer, but not so much for you. Mixer's bath in chemicals and are then re-greased and oiled. The new grease/oil smells like new grease and oil. And if we have re-oiled your armature bush wicking pad, then it's likely going to leak some of that oil and maybe eventually make its way to the external body of the mixer (underneath the stand)!

There are also little nooks and crannies that hold some of the liquids, only to dribble out over time. Hopefully not too much and not for very long. Just wipe it up with a paper towel and continue mixing. But for the most part you shouldn't notice too much more than the smell.