Neolube revisited

[Bill H]

Max et al;
I have been a happy user of Neolube in all sorts of situations, especially valve gear on my steamers - thanks to Max. I build a lot of code 40 turnouts and have always been troubled with how to deal with darkening the shiny copper pcb throwbar tie, especially where it passes under the rails. So the other day, I thought, maybe this is a good application for Neolube. Much to my surprise, while it indeed darkened the throwbar, it seems to significantly increase resistance between the throwbar and the rails over the throwbar. Frankly, I was really surprised at that result. In fact, I had to go back and scrape off the Neolube to get the turnouts to throw without problems.

Max, does this surprise you? Should I have waited more than a few hours for the Neolube to dry? Thoughts?

Kind regards,
Bill

[mmagliaro]

Neolube is generally a slippery graphite lubricant.  But... if it gets dirt or oil on it, it can indeed cause friction and be kind of "sticky" between sliding surfaces.  The oil seems to dissolve whatever the binder is in the Neolube, making it sticky.  If you use it on valve
gear parts, it works great as a lubricant, but I don't put any oil on it.  Did you happen to have any oil on that throwbar?
You should be able to clean it all out with a small brush a lots of alchohol (no scraping required). 
If you want to give it another go, I would try making sure the throwbar and all the surfaces under the rails it will touch are cleaned with alcohol first.  Otherwise, no, I don't know why it would be sticky.

[peteski]

I wonder if it is rosin flux residue?  Alcohol is a solvent for rosin, so it might mix with Neolube.

[Bill H]

I wonder if it is rosin flux residue?  Alcohol is a solvent for rosin, so it might mix with Neolube.

Pete - I use SuperSafe 30 liquid flux, and wash all my builds in 90 IPA and then soap and water before going into storage. These particular turnouts were built literally a decade ago and put into storage, before they got drafted in this new module.

It is a real puzzle to me to be honest, Neolube has always done exactly what I was expecting. I will keep trying to drill down on the issue.