Milltec and Dry Lubes

[zahc]

Sunday I went to the Power Show in Columbus OH, which is sort of a convention. I happened upon some folks selling this stuff called motor coat that you add to oil to reduce friction. They had a demonstration setup with a lube tester thing, which was a rotating, steel, wheel belt driven with an electric motor. It has a fixture with a single roller bearing clamped rigidly in it and the point is, you hang weight on the lever and compare how much weight it take to stall the wheel.

With a fixed amount of weight, they do it dry and the wheel instantly stalls. Then they dump valvoline, grease, mobil 1, you name it all over it,and there is a big difference but the wheel slowly stalls. Then they dump their additive on it and the wheel falters, but then continues to spin very easily and quietly. For a long time. The cool part comes when they spray the wheel down with carb cleaner with a rag held up to it to show that this stuff is a metal treatment and won’t come off. They have to take emery cloth and sand the wheel down to get the wheel to stall again.


I am not new to this type of stuff, have seen this same sold under different names as racing product. I have seen gearbox temperatures drop 20*f after adding it, chains last twice as long and not collect dirt from lube. I just never thought that maybe something similar could be in gun lubes.

Anyway the point is that it reminds me of what miltech says about impregnating the metal and working even dry. I always had a hard time believing that lubes worked even after they appeared to be gone but if it works anything like this stuff I believe it. I’m thinking about mixing it with my CLP or using it on my fishing reels.

Any chemists care to speculate (or know) on what make these metal treatments work?

 

[45R]

I'm not so sure mixing the additive to the CLP would be a good idea. One of the things you may want to ask for is the Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS). ID any compounds that it can react with and become unstable or even toxic. CLP is Cleaner Lube and Protectant. I dont see an additive reacting with the lube part buy maybe the C or the P. I'm no chemist so you may want to consult with a lab.

 

[zahc]

Good idea. Never thought of that. It says on the bottle it can be mixed with any gearlube, motor oil, ATF, etc.

The only CLP I have now is in spray cans anyway.

 

[R-WEST]

I'm not sure about the chemistry of it, but, I've tried the Militec stuff on a few rifles - cleaned everything down to bare metal with action cleaner, dried it off, then wiped the Militec on there, and the results were amazing. Nice/smooth, silky feeling. I'm impressed.

R-WEST

 

[Penforhire]

I'm not sure of the chemistry of Militec but I've been impressed with fluoropolymer resin coatings. There are a bunch of PTFE's (Teflon is one trade name) and there are liquid precursors to solid PTFE's (PFPE's, perfluorinated polyethers). They have low chemical reactivity (resistant to most solvents), low toxicity, amazing temperature stability, low friction coefficients, and of course they are expensive.

Usually the lube itself is not so expensive (as used in 1 - 5% dilutions) but the carrier solvent can be absurd ($5K per pound and up, e.g. 3M's Novec series) and it evaporates very quickly.

Some of the larger mixed-lube PFPE suppliers are DuPont (Krytox series), Nye (various), Castrol (Braycote), Kluber (IEL), and Syntech (NS-series).

 

[bountyhunter]

I read a lot from the person who helped develop FP-10 (he used to post on the 1911 forum). He states that it leaves a molecular film which bonds to the surface, I think Militec is similar. Point is, they still provide a lube effect even when the carrier has evaporated. I use both and they are outstanding lube products, although I understand Militec is not as good for rust inhibiting.

The demonstration you describe is interesting, but not necessarily real useful as a predictor of the oils quality. It looks like it would be measuring shear strength of the lube (how well it hangs together under shear stress) and maybe temp cohesion (how well it stays oily at higher temps, because the friction will be superheating the lube). I don't find it applicable to gun applications.

car gearboxes? Maybe, they do get hot. FWIW, I'd be interested in knowing what's in it.

I can remember using ARCO "Black Oil" which I used in the late seventies that had a graphite substannce in it that coated every inch of the inside of the engine and reduced friction. It worked really well, as evidenced by the 150,000 miles I put on my old Dodge before I sold it to somebody else. The stuff really "plated" down onto the insides. I used it in my motorcyle and it "plated" over the inside of the sight glass where you check oil level and turned it dark grey. Each time I'd have to take the side plate off and scrub that with acetone to get it off.