djed wrote:Thanks everyone for your feedback.
I bought the Lubriplate 130AA in the 10oz tube and it is coming out in different consistencies. Mostly it is the beige grease as expected but there are spurts of light green (think slime) colored oily substance here and there.
It's just starting to separate when it does that. If you knead the tube or stir up the tub you can get it to mix in again.
As bill mentioned, lubriplate can dry out over time as the oil evaporates or separates out of it. I love lubriplate for certain things where things require frequent re-lubricating but I don't use it in an enclosed situation when I won't have easy access to it so I can re-lube it at
least every year or so.
Synthetic greases are still petroleum byproducts but they're more highly refined and filtered than the non-synthetic brands. They usually lubricate better and last longer. I'm REALLY generalizing here, but hopefully I'm making sense with this explanation. Militec makes a nice grease for firearms. It stinks to high heaven but really lasts and is wondrous at reducing friction. I use it on certain parts in Abloy cylinders. I'm not just trying to tout one brand though, there are lots of other synthetic oils and greases on the market that are probably great as well in various applications, and in general I'll have a bit more faith in a synthetic grease than old school stuff.
In the instructions some greases recommend heating the metal before application. I've heard it described as giving the grease or oil a chance to "soak-in or penetrate into the pores in the steel" making the lube sound like a skin lotion, or the metal sound like it has wood-like properties. That's not really the best comparison since steel doesn't have pores in that sense, but if you look at most steel surfaces under high enough magnification it can look extremely coarse. If you heat the metal before applying some greases, it melts the grease and allows it to flow into the deeper microscopic crevasses and lower spots in the metal, displacing the air there and filling the space with lubricant. That way even when all of the visible grease has been wiped or worn off, the surface is still actually lubricated since the surface tension of the grease will keep it in those deeper pits in the steel, providing at least a minimal amount of lubrication even when it appears all the grease is gone.
At a trade show once I had a factory rep start an engine with synthetic oil, let it warm up, then pulling the drain plug and letting all the oil drain out into a barrel. He let that engine run for a LONG time, essentially dry, and it didn't seize up. Granted, it was at idle and not under load, but it was still impressive. Once the parts had fully heated up so the oil could fully coat the metal, right down to the microscopic level, it kept providing lubrication just with the small amount of oil that was stuck to the parts. He really sold an awful lot of mechanics on the benefits of synthetic motor oil that day. Sold a ton of the stuff.
