Kind of tough to drill and tap for grease zerks with it all together. Those bits of metal from drilling and tapping will end up inside the auger tubes between the drive shaft and tubes. You also need to get the thickness measurement for the tubes to get the right size zerks so they don't go in too far and hit the shaft.

 

Everything skutflut said.
It would be hard to keep the metal filings form going into the space you are trying to grease.
Also as he mentioned the zerk threads have to typically be rather shallow so as not to protrude into the solid shaft.

 

It would be tough to get those threads tapped. You would need a bottom tap however usually you start with tapered taps to get the threads started...and there's no runway to do that with the axle right behind the auger metal.

 

Thanks everyone -- I'll do it the way it should be done -- by removing the auger and drilling and tapping for the zeros.

 

While you're in there don't forget to check the bearing/bushing on the impeller shaft behind the pulley, and the ones on the ends of the augers, and the seals on the gear case. Hate to have to do that job twice. If you have shearbolts in the impeller, remove them and make sure the impeller turns on the shaft as well. Also remember to mark the augers left and right so they go on in the right direction. Also remember to leave a bit of slop when you reinstall the shearbolts so they can actually shear if necessary. If they are tightened too much they can deform the tube a bit and bind on the shaft so the gearbox gets to take the part of the shock :smiley-confused009:

 

Take the augers off, clean the shaft and augers very well, drill thread and install the zerk fittings and install the augers with plenty of grease on the shaft.
The fact that the augers spin slowly is telling you that there is soon to be serious issues (the augers need to spin really easy on the shaft for the shea pins to work properly and protect the gear box).

I'm currently fighting two severely seized augers on my Ariens ST1236 :icon_blue_very_sad:, if you look at them you would not think that they are seized as there is no considerable corrosion and the paint looked very good (until I burned part of it on my heat and cool removal attempts).