Thoughts on Graphite As Loco Lube

[tehachapifan]

So...to take the subject of loco lubrication (where electrical conductivity must be maintained) in another direction, what are experiences or thoughts on using dry graphite instead of some type of oil?

[victor miranda]

you could try it and tell us your conclusions.

a late '70 oil added graphite and claimed great things.
I tried my own recipe of dry lock stuff and a little oil.

.... it seemed to conduct ok....
as lube goes I am not sure.

I recall great blackness...

victor

[mecgp7]

I purchased some used locos once and the previous owner used graphite. He way over did it and it was a mess. I can't say whether it works well or not, but a little goes a long way.

[CoalPorter]

I have. I think that is what
Micro Trains sells as "Grease - Em "

[mmagliaro]

For side rods, crankpins, sliding valve gear parts... I think it works well, and yes, I am referring to
Neolube, which is graphite in alcohol, but I suppose you could try lock lubricants or "Grease em" too.

But on gears.... no.  Even assuming you conduct a few experiments, where you get the gears all shiny
clean by washing them all out in alcohol and put the mechanism back together, ...
not that I've tried this or anything      cough cough, nudge nudge.

It seems to me that at first, the wash of neolube did great things.  But after it all dries out, it
does leave a pretty firm coating of hardened graphite, almost like a shell coating the gears.
It is not as slippery as you think it would be, and it also adds thickness to the teeth and surfaces.
Even on a relatively open and "sloppy" fitting gear mesh like  Trix K4 (cough cough), it
causes more binding.

Whether puffs of powdered graphite would work better, I don't know.  But it doesn't seem to me that it would.
Metal to metal gears, I think, really need a coating of oil to work right, and on slippery plastic gears, I try never
to use anything at all.

[loyalton]

Dry graphite powder will get thrown all over by relatively fast moving parts like gears. Neolube probably exists for that reason.

[nkalanaga]

That's the problem with powdered graphite:  It doesn't stick to smooth surfaces.  And if your gears or bearings are rough enough to hold it, they probably need more than just a little lubricant.  Graphite works for brushes because it's in a block, with the wearing surface part of the block.