i'm just starting to build my layout, & i have several old postwar lionel steam engines & i'm curious on what all needs oiled, & greased. plus what kind of oil & grease do you use? i'm just wanting to make sure i'm doing it right.
i have a 2056 that runs good, but it is noisy, & i think a good cleaning & lube job would quieten it down quite a bit, as i've never lubed this engine. i'm sure it will never be quiet like a modern can motored engine, but it seems excessively loud. it's loud enough that it gets on my nerves.
Jerry,
I want to caution you against running engines that are not properly lubed. This can ruin an engine beyond repair. My favorite for lubing engines and cars and anything else is 5W-20 motor oil. It doesn't dry out and get gummy or hard. My experience with greases is that they all get hard after a while. I have been using oil to lube my trains since I was 9 years old in 1950. I recently took a 2025 engine out of the box which I last used in 1965. It was oiled with Valvoline 20W-40, and still had enough oil on it to run easily. I did lube it again, but it has never been apart to be cleaned. I only clean engines when they don't run right. This particular engine has a lot of hours on it. It was made in 1948. I have another engine that was made in 1917, and when I got it I fixed the bad wiring, lubed it and that is all I had to do to get it running.
Bruce Baker
I usually use Mobile 1 synthetic oil applied with a small brush. Be careful not to use too much oil. I put some oil in another smaller container and barely dip the brush into it. I get my brushes from the Dollar Tree in the art and school supply department. Lionel published a diagram in their instruction books on how to oil these engines.You should be able to find it on the Lionel Website.
George
Jim Barrett has a nice article on his recommended lube. oil and applicators in this December's O Gauge Railroading magazine. I may order that stuff myself!
Quick guide: Grease where there you see gear teeth, oil where there are bearings such as wheel axles, and the end of the motor armature shaft.
I also put a drop of oil on the armature where it comes through the brush plate because I find it helps.
If there's a squeak, I know it sounds funny but put your ear close if you can and try to figure out where it's coming from. Lube or oil as necessary where you hear it...a squeak can even come from side rods which can stand a dab of lube if there's rubbing.
i cleaned & lubed it last night. ir runs a lot quieter. i do have a question. does the brush plate have a bushing where the armiture goes through it? if so, mine doesn't. i put son vaseline on the side rods screws, & that helped most of all. most of the noise was comming from them.
Great question, and good responses. I have been looking at the synthetic lubes advertised on ebay and wondering if I should switch to synthetic. I had a great plastic bottle with a steel needle top that worked great for wheels and axles. The plastic finally got hard and cracked after I can't count how many years. So I think it is time to buy a new one.
Hoping more folks will weigh in on the switch to synthetics.
I am lubing AF locomotives and rolling stock, but this is an area where guage or manufacturer is pretty much irrelavant.
Chevys or Fords, Spartans or Buckeyes. What you use is a matter of personal taste. The important part is that you use some sort of lube. Generally, grease on the gears, and oil on the bearings - don't forget the pick up rollers either.
Remember to use the Bryl Cream advice - A little dab will do ya. Too much lube causes cleanliness problems.
For years, I've used Lionel grease on the gears, and 3 in 1 oil on the bearings. Just recently I've gotten some LaBelle grease and oil, mostly because of the neat built in pin point applicator and the fact that these lubes are compatable with the plastic components on my newer equipment.
Some synthetic lubricants will attack plastics.Why take a chance?I use Labelle plastic compatable lubricants.For grease I have been using Labelle 106 grease for many years.Never had a complaint, or any sort of failure.
A recent acquisition of mine was an MPC James Gang General which looked like it had been lubed with Skippy. I blotted away most of the "grease" from the plastic gears and lubed them instead with 3 in 1 oil. But I'd rather grease them. So which is better, White Lithium or Silicon?
Becky
Trains, trains, wonderful trains. The more you get, the more you toot!
Read Backshop [starts on page 99] in December OGR magazine. CTT has done a several good articles on this in the past but this one was current and handy for me to refer too. Good article.
God bless TCA 05-58541 Benefactor Member of the NRA, Member of the American Legion, Retired Boss Hog of Roseyville , KC&D Qualified
I tried Lionel grease then switched to Labelle grease. It never stayed on gears no matter what. It runs off when it gets warm. I have switched over to Lucas Red and Tacky grease. Its staying put now. I bought synthetic oil from a dude on Ebay and that is working well so far for oiling bearings and side rods. I still use Labell oil for armatures. I thought I read somewhere that Lionel way back when, said to NEVER use 3 in 1 oil?
Roger
I'll second the use of Labelle's products, but I'm curious to try Bruce's suggestion of 5W20 oil, I think I'd go with the sythetic, too. Not so much advice on cleaning here yet, so...
I clean all my postwar engines first before lubing--it removes old grease, dirt, gunk, dust, etc. I use WD-40 to clean all my stuff--it works well as a solvent, removes crusted on stuff with maybe a little scrubbing with a brush, rinse it again, wipe off as much as able. Then, I remove the WD-40 with a tuner cleaner/electrical parts cleaner. The WD isn't a good long-term lube, as it really attracts dirt. So once I remove all the WD with the tuner cleaner, then I lube with Labelle's. Good luck with whatever you go with!
OGR has a great article on this in the current issue.
Nothing is more fairly distributed than common sense: no one thinks he needs more of it than he already has.
White lithium grease is miserable stuff. It will quickly become hard as the oil evaporates and leaves the clay behind. Silicon has the problem that it doesn't have any surface tension, so a drop of silicon oil will cover the entire engine and table top. I haven't tried silicon grease. I use motor oil for one simple reason: it has a very low vapor pressure and doesn't get gummy or hard. I have 45+ years of experience with it. I use it on gears rather than using a grease for this reason. I am not going to use something that has to be scraped off at some future date. Recently, I have cleaned two locos that someone greased, and it wasn't all that easy or fun. I oiled both locos, and they are both running just fine.
I don't know if the motor oil will attack plastic, but I know it doesn't attack the nylon gears that some locos have. I would keep it off of the shells of engines and cars as there is no reason to oil them.
3 in 1 oil also will get gummy as the oil evaporates. I strongly recommend that it not be used.
The Lionel lube also gets hard. Many of the old cars I have have caked on stuff on the wheels which is probably Lionel lube that has dried out. It is possible that it is something else, but it is on most of the car that I have, and they came from many different places.
I think part of the problem in determining the proper oils and grease to use is a lack of meaningful standards in which we can evaluate various lubricants for our particular applications. The market for O scale trains is so small that I am sure any analysis would be cost prohibitive. The automotive industry has their API standards and oil viscosities such as 5W30, 10W30, etc. Our small corner of the hobby world is not anywhere near large enough to warrant this type of attention. This is why we continue to rely on the manufacturers' brand of lubricants as well as other products that work for others. Unfortunately this also opens us up to hearsay, rumors, and superstition.
Another issue is how much lubricant to apply. I think many of us tend to over lubricate. I know I feel better if I can actually see the grease on the gears but this could very well be too much grease. I do not recall ever seeing a picture or description of what a properly lubricated locomotive is supposed to look like. I suspect this will probably depend on the locomotive and is another case where there are far too many variables to give a definite answer. Of course I could be wrong about all of this and I welcome any corrections and criticism of my opinions.
Karl
Bruce is right in that automotive motor oil probably will not harm nylon gears. Chevrolet used a nylon coupler inside the crankcase to connect the oil pump drive on V8's from 1955 to the 90's at least.
Roger,
Hi that is a good point you make about the oil pump sleeve in small block chevrolets. In fact one of the timing gears was also nylon, plastic or some such composite. The cam gear as I recall.
Thanks,
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