then the same guy posted this info as well.
WD-40 is only useful as a water dispersant. Got wet parts that need to be something other than wet? Hose them down (or dip them) in WD-40, and the water problem is gone!
Seriously. The stuff is awesome for this role.
Leave your tools in the driveway after a cloudburst interrupts your car repair session? No problem: Use some WD-40, and they’ll never get a chance to oxidize and form any meaningful rust. Snowblower dies because of melting snow fouling the ignition system? Solved.
But for everything else… As a lubricant, it’s totally lousy. As a a penetrating oil, it’s just as bad. As a rust-preventative, it barely works. As a rust-remover, I daresay it doesn’t work. And on bearings? Fuhgettaboutit.
For squeaking hinges, at home or in the car (or suspension bushings for that matter), try white lithium grease (or plain old paraffin wax, if disassembly is an option).
For small bearings of all types, try Tri-Flow or SAE-30 motor oil.
3-in-1 Oil(tm) is no good long term for things that spin rapidly and/or get hot. It does free up rusted things fairly well (though it doesn’t have awesome penetration), but also contains linseed oil which becomes a solid eventually (by design). Works great on a pair of box-joint pliers or dikes or other hand tools (oil once and forget about it for several years of smooth operation), but not so much as a machine lubricant. (Hint: Linoleum tile is made from linseed oil.)
The same folks who make 3-in-1 also offer a motor oil in a similar container, but it’s just non-detergent SAE-30…which is not dissimilar to the non-detergent SAE-30 available by the quart in a discount store near you. The packaging is nice and convenient, though, which makes it easy to use. It’s distinctly appropriate for lubricating electric motor bearings, and can easily make the tiny bearings in a computer fan live for another half-decade or more.
Tri-Flow is awesome for all kinds of stuff, since it actively dissolves oxidation and is thin enough to penetrate, but it has PTFE (Teflon) solids which can piss off close-tolerance things. YMMV, but I find that Tri-Flow is everything that WD-40 claims to be (but isn’t). OTOH, Tri-Flow is expensive enough to be used either sparingly or for only for important projects (at least on my budget).
But again: WD-40? Never. At best, it’s a temporary fix, since once the kerosene evaporates there’s very little oil left over. Sometimes I think I’m the only person still alive who has used it for what it does best: To disperse water and keep it away long enough for a proper lubricant to be applied. (Wet rifle after a long day of hunting in the rain? WD-40 will save it, easily and quickly…though following up with something else is important.)
WD-40 is also marginally useful as a cleaning solvent, but no better than regular (and cheap!) kerosene. And the small amount of oil it leaves behind means additional mess, which itself needs cleaned…
For cleaning, if one isn’t in California: Cleaning parts using CRC Brak-Kleen (in the red can) is the bees knees. It is simply tetrachloroethylene in a spraycan, which is otherwise known as “dry cleaning fluid.” Only use with ventillation (ideally outdoors) and try to keep it off of your skin (it dries it out pretty well), but it washes away grease and dirt and evaporates completely and quickly.
(I -think- I’m done ranting about WD-40 substitutions, now. Sorry for the digression.)
//edited to quotes, since code tags made text unreadable
Use better grease. Or, better, don’t use grease.
As it seems like you know, sintered bronze bearings are just porous bronze soaked in oil. Sometimes a silicone-based oil, sometimes mineral.
But whatever the case, they’re not packed with grease. (“Grease” implies a thick viscosity, which will only sit on the surface of the bearing and never really work its way into the pores as the designers intended.)
These aren’t hardened steel wheel bearings, ball joints, or gearboxes, and grease (per se) isn’t really appropriate for these sorts of applications.
It’d be nice to know what kind of oil (mineral or otherwise) the bearings were initially lubricated with so that the same thing could be used to replace it, but that never happens…
I wrote a lot of words elsewhere under this article about replacements for WD-40 that actually work, but specific to small-electric-motor lubricants: Try simple, cheap, non-detergent SAE-30 motor oil. A single quart of it will cost less than outright replacing whatever it is you’re trying to rescue, and in these quantities will last you the rest of your life of fixing random spinning things.
(If you have any reason to suspect that the original oil was silicone instead of mineral, then use silicone instead and you’ll be even further ahead at the start of the game. (Super-Lube is a good place to start for silicone oils that don’t suck.))
That all said: Getting fresh oil into the sintered bronze can be difficult without complete disassembly and/or the application of heat. Chances are that by the time you’ve realized that the part is failing (or has failed), the pores are beginning to be worn shut from direct metal-on-metal contact.
My trick, after a lot of experimentation combined with a general unwillingness to disassemble things any further than necessary: Expose at least part of the bearing. Turn the thing on. Listen. Apply somewhat more oil than ought to be necessary, to wash out accumulated dust. Listen. Keep the thing on. Wait. Apply more oil. Wait longer (hours, at least). Listen. If things are still sounding like a well-oiled machine, wipe it all down and button it up, otherwise rinse and repeat again.
It’s not always a one-shot job, but I’ve simply not lost a sintered-bronze sleeve bearing on a fan since I started doing it this way: Some of them are still service nearly a decade later, and NONE have failed — including the exhaust blower on my furnace, which I haven’t had to touch in the four years since I worked some oil into it after it woke me up on an extremely cold Sunday with the horrible screech of a dry bearing. Indeed, I trust my relubricated bearings more than I do new (“sealed”) parts, since (in my experience) they last longer after I’ve done my thing to them than they do with the original oil (or lack thereof).
YMMV; this is mine.
