So, whats the best way to keep your elbows greased? A good mechanic used to be operator for E-con., said Schwing said to drill a couple grease Zerks into the clamps, use grease on the outside of the rubbers and let the inside grout to the pipe. The rotation should be on the outside of the rubbers?

good thought but the reason for a gasket is a seal. the rotating 90's are steel to steel the gasket is the seal. if the clamp is tight the outside of the gasket should not move. Keep the inside of the gasket well greased and change when you see it leaking

Some ideas:

You could try using the triple lip gaskets to keep slurry out and maintain a bearing effect.

Bear in mind that elbows that are seized or hard to move generally mean the pipeline is either too short or too long a few mm leading into the trouble prone elbow(s). Assuming your measurements are accurate enough, you can also slide the whole pipeline up a few mms or down a few millimeters to find the hot spot where there is minimum resistance to the bend pivot clamp. Then clamp the pipes to the boom.

The grease nipple in the elbow pivot clamp is the quick fix solution to wrong pipe lengths (although not the 'right' solution).

Just give that idea a thought b-alto and you will realize that that's impossible.

My thought was to use the smaller non "v" type rubbers and the grease would be on the out side so you could maintain better. Mainly the tip elbow, the main turret swivel, and the one coming out of the turret. He said grease the clamp before bolting it on, then keep it greased?

It doesn't help much to greas the outside. (ionly for closing the clamb it helps.) But there are 2 'components' inside the rubber that move individualy so there will always be 1 moving inside the rubber. I always fill the rubber with grease but i am not sure how long that stays. For the rest you will just have to swich them ones in a while.

Latest I discovered is my tiphose elbow actualy goes better after the rubber gets a bit older. (strange) So now I wait with switching untill it realy starts to leak. Than the first 2 weeks after switching its the worst, than it gets better again.

I drilled, tapped and installed grease zerks in my former pump tip clamp, I also used a Dremel to create a channel to direct the grease to the clamp/tip elbow interface. But I always wondered if I inadvertently created a weak spot that may be prone to failure. Unmodified lamps fail often enough on their own. I'd like to have a quick-change clamp on the for the tip elbow, but I'm leery of having a snap clamp there. A one-bolt clamp would be better. But even the best of the cast clamps don't seem to be 'beefy' enough to suit my liking, especially if modified to grease. I've been contemplating having a machine shop custom build one out of a steel billet, I'd have about double the material thickness on the sides that contact the raised coupler edge, then I'd feel more confident about having the grease channels cut in.

I've been using steel lined gasket for a while, and they seem to hold up better. IE. the flanges ride on the steel liner rather than ripping the rubber.
But they are a bit.. to clean, so they usually end up in the bin and a new one is put on.
And greasing the outside with zerks in the clamp is in my opinion a foolproof way to make sure you get a leak since you push the gasket into the flanges wich moves and in turn rip the gasket to pieces.

A couple things I have seen

I'm wanting to say 3 wraps of duct tape under the rubber,then grease rubber (from Atlanta)

Using the Putz type gasket,greased,one wrap duct tape (from Denver)

Grease gasket,wrap with plastic (from Houston)

just deal with it like I did,yuk,I know

I started using anti-seize that u use for bolts on my swivel gaskets and I noticed they lasted alot longer and swiveled much better too. It's just a little messy a little anti-seize can make a big mess!!!

I have found that greasing the clamp via the zerk fittings actually makes the elbow tighter/tougher to swivel, I am guessing that the grease is just creating hydraulic pressure and squeezing the gasket tighter around the elbows. Similar to what pumpjockey was saying, it's almost as if you need a channel cut into the clamp to direct grease the critical areas in the swivel junction.

Another thought is to cut channels into the backside of the rubber gasket to channel the grease to the clamp, elbow contact point. This still entails drilling for the grease zerk, but you don't create the stress points on the clamp. I've got a tire grooving tool that makes nice, clean cuts in rubber, I think I'll give that a go.

They make a few different types of rubber gaskets, i'm not sure what the designs "special purposes" are? I was thinking of using the small non v grooved with grease on the out side.

 ACE hardware has 5 gal buckets on sale this week