best gear oils and grease for g scale locos

on the gears on the inside of a sealed gearbox I have been using moble 1 grease with a lot of luck .....

it has a high temp that it becomes liquid at and stays well on the gears and is fully plastic compatable ......





http://www.mobiloil.com/USA-English/MotorOil/Other_Products/Mobil_1_Synthetic_Grease.aspx


and though I agree that oils tend to attract dirt I have not had a lot of luck keeping things lubed with dry lubes .....

and you have to use something that conducts on pickups ..... like the bachmann contact lube or the black stuff that lgb and aristo both have made


anything white lithium based I find goes to a liquid state on a good hot day and runs away from what it is there to lube ......

me saying conductive is a poor use of words .......

you do not want a oil that will conduct or a film of oil in the wrong place could cause a short to ground

you do want a oil that does not stop conduction .........


I to have used the bachmann oil and liked it but agree the the price is way to high for what you get ......

I have been useing synergyn assembly lube on things that need to conduct and so far have liked it .....

. it coats well does not attact plastic and does not stop conduction and does not run away

I got mine at the local speed shop ...... but they are on line too I think


no moly ....I hate moly I have seen it tear up high load heavy equipment ( I am a machinist by trade )

some of my oil tests where by trial and error ........

I did all the repairs for our local bio-park railroad for years and I was looking for ways to cut down the amount of work I had to do and one big way was to find some oil and grease that would stay put and hold up becouse I could not get the guys that run the trains to do much in the way of maintenance .........

when picking I would first start by puting a very thin strip of cheap styrene into the oil or grease and see if it would mess it up in a week or month or year if not then I would try it ........

most oils that I found would oil a bearing just fine but coat the electrical pickup as a electrical insulator and the loco would have power pickup problems .... this did not happen right away but took some run time to make the pickup not work

this lube did not and the power pickup got better with the lube then none at all so I started using it all the time and things went very well ........


the grease I like only on gears as it will work its way up a gear stack if put at the bottom and will not melt away in heat ....... sometimes here it van get to 110 degrees outside and I am sure that in the gearbox it was more like 140 and a lot of hobby grease would just melt and run away from the bearings ....... this stuff would still be there when I got the loco back on the next round ......... so I started telling the local club and others tryed it and as far as I know there has been no down side ....... most of the bio park locos would get 10000 to 15000 hours in there life .........


and I do agree that a dry lube would be better but none that I have tryed work long enough for me ........


I have also found that a lot of the oils put on locos from china do not help the conduction of the power pickup and has to be cleaned off .........

and that black stuff that makes the wheels look great also does not conduct well ..... so you need to use a bright boy and clean it off the tread and back of the wheel if it has wipers ......

I just did a speeder from usa ( the old k-line one ) and it went from not running at all out of the box to running great with just this oil grease and thaking the black off the wheel where the pickups ride ......