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aizan
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, December 11, 2004 - 05:49 pm: | 
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When I got my collapsible Summicron, the grease was gunky and made the focusing jerky. Now that I've cleaned the helical with Ronsonol and relubed with 'Engine Assembly Lube with Moly and Graphite' (from Kragen), it's much improved but too heavily dampened. I don't think it's a problem of application since there's only a thin film and any less is not enough (I had to add more at one point). The grease just requires a little too much muscle.
What grease should I try next? Silicone...teflon...the light helical grease from Micro-Tools (kinda pricey)? I've read online that one person uses a mixture of this grease and some oil (http://mejac2.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/v22/msg10591.html). Do you think that's ok? Might the oil run amok later on? |
Winfried
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, December 12, 2004 - 03:15 am: |
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Sometimes cleaning the helical with lighter fluid is not sufficient. Did you scrape the old grease completely out of the threads? You can use pointed wooden toothpicks. I have encountered several lenses where there was still enough old grease down in the threads to dampen them too much.
However I would recommend NOT to use any machinists grease since it is always composed with mineral oil which may bleed out over time. Better use a fully synthetic grease or silicone grease. |
aizan
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, December 12, 2004 - 10:38 am: |
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yep, scraped and swabbed until it was shining. i'll try silicone next, but if that's still too thick, i'm going to ring up micro-tools. i'll ask them whether mixing synthetic oil into their light helical grease poses any danger of separating. thanks! |
aizan
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, December 16, 2004 - 09:28 am: |
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I can't believe it. Only one bike shop an hour away has silicone grease, but it's the heavy kind. I don't feel like hunting for silicone oil right now, so I'm just going to get the hobby lube kit from micro-tools...brb! |
