thanks man, I tried the tube thing, but didn't manage to make it work. what I did was grease the inside of the piston, and put 3 ball bearings in at a time, then ran them to the front as far as they would go (into the tube for the first few) and repeated. wasn't that bad, I kind of got a description of how to do it from that link you posted a little after I posted the question.
sorry for not seeing what you quoted earlier.
hopefully this will at least help someone else later on.
