About fifteen years ago I lubed my (stepper version) G11 with Slick 50 bearing grease.? Since that time I have used it in temperatures from -20F to as hot as I could stand.??
I'm sure Super Lube would do the trick.? ? Any vehicle bearing grease that you could drive through Death Valley in the summer and up to Alaska in the winter would do the trick.? Remember that you'll be dead before the amount of wear on your mount bearings equals the wear on a vehicle by taking just one trip to the super market.? Back and forth, back and forth, across the sky: maybe 30 times in a night?? And not even every night.??
Pretty low rpm usage, even if your usage is high.? I mean, compared to thousands of rpm, you have in one year less than a typical vehicle will accrue in one minute (on the basis of rpm).
The only grease problem I've heard of is in the 1990s the grease that came with the needle bearings interacted with the grease Losmandy was using in the mount.? The two together made a glue like stuff.? You had to brush it out with a tooth brush and solvent.??
Religious wars about the best grease and out gassing also come up among SCT users when the more adventurous of them are going into the tube to regrease the baffle sleeve.? There the big bugaboo is "outgassing."? ?
I remember I got some very expensive synthetic used in the space program because of my fear of outgassing.? I ended up re-selling it on Astromart.? For whatever reason I don't think it worked out.? This was fifteen or sixteen years ago.? I think that my problem with it is that the focus did not have a "smooth feel" with this stuff.??
Anyhow I removed it all as best I could and ended up using my Slick 50 bearing grease.? The particular container I used is no longer sold (from what I see).? I'm sure Super Lube would be just as good.? ?Anyhow that was fifteen years ago I have used the scope and the mount in freezing conditions and I have left the C14 with its regular ol' bearing grease on the baffle sleeve in a hot closed car.? So far no out gassing.? So far everything works.
I don't expect to have to mess with the G11 or the C14 again till I croak.??
These are beautiful pieces of equipment that we're talking about and we all want to baby our gear.? And maybe if you're in wretchedly dusty conditions you *do* need to to regrease the mount, I won't say no.? But the conditions which would do harm to your G11: put it this way, I have pity for your optics.? If the G11 is going down your optics are going first under those extremes.
I sympathize with the desire to tinker with the mount I was "into" that when I first got mine.? One of the things I did was install a third needle bearing in the RA and Dec axes.? Way back when, around 2003-2004, that was one of the leading prescriptions to reduce PE.? I have no idea why.? Anyhow I was operating a C14 on the mount and I thought well maybe the extra bearings will help out with the C14.? So I put them in and they are there to this day.? I really can't say if they improved anything.??
These days I just use the mount.? I've had it 18 years.??
Greg N
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