So today, I'm in a waiting pattern. A non-driving friend may need me at a moment's notice, so I'm only doing easily picked up and put down projects.
Playing with wiring motors and lights yesterday though got me thinking about motor lube.
There are many opinions about this but I wondered how much was based on testing.
I'd like to have a discussion about this based on the preliminary results, so I'm not going to offer any of my own conclusions yet, just ask for everyone's thoughts on how to proceed.
Things I've
heard:
- The original lube is virtually indistinguishable from Vaseline
- Vaseline will destroy your motors by liquefying too fast
- Recent versions of Singer lube are no longer suitable for use in motors
- A well known featherweight related vendor or two have formulated their own formulas that are quite expensive comparatively vs Singer Lube.
Since we're concerned about melting point, I'd originally thought I might pick up a candy thermometer or some other measuring device that would tell us at exactly what temperature everything was melting at but today I thought... do we need to know that? For preliminary testing at least - not really.
So, I employed my toaster oven, a paper towel and a sharpie and here's what I found.
Since my sharpie did horribly on the paper towel, here's what you're seeing.
From Left to right: 1. Original Singer Lube. 2. Vaseline. 3. "Old" Pink tube formula 4. "New" pink tube formula.
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This is what the 3 lubes look like out of the tube:
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I set the toaster oven temperature around 180F. The first lube melted. I eventually had to raise it to a touch over 200F to get a second lube to melt. For the last 2, I ended up raising it to 300 then 350F before the 3rd started to liquefy. Here's how everyone fared:
- First the Vaseline melted and disappeared. At this point, nothing else was showing signs of state change. Under 200F.
- Next, the "Old" pink lube percolated and boiled then spread and soaked into the paper towel - not unlike a nice cheddar cheese would do. This was about or a little above 200F.
- Then I had to wait. Easily 5 more minutes and then the "New" Pink lube started to melt. At that point I took it out of the oven and tried to take a pic. By that time, the new lube had disappeared into the paper towel. While I was watching the melting points though, I watched the New lube and the original lube saturating the paper towel virtually identically, so it was a bit of a surprise when the original lube didn't liquefy at the same time.
Thoughts? Comments?