Hello all - I am planning to re-grease the worm gears on my G11 (which I purchased from new in 2009).?
I have seen a few websites where this is described, and on one I saw that someone had put grease all around the outside of the large worm wheel.?
I worked in the lubricants industry for almost 30 years, and I would have thought you only need to lubricate the worm.
The contact between the worm and the worm gear is what is known as an elastohydrodynamic contact - in practice the oil film thickness between the gear teeth will be less than 1 micron (in fact much less if the gears are heavily loaded).?
So let's say you put 5 ml of grease on the worm. That will be more than sufficient to coat all the worm wheel during operation.?
Do people generally think it necessary to grease the worm wheel? I would have thought this would be far too much grease and if it leaks into other parts of the mount (like the clutches) it could cause problems.
Synthetic grease would be a good choice, since this will definitely reduce friction (even if the synthetic and mineral grease seem to have the same viscosity at room temperature and pressure, the viscosity of the synthetic lubricant will be lower than that of the mineral oil when it is at the high pressure in the gears).?
Finally, do you have to dissamble the worm to regrease it? I would have thought you could use a toothbrush soaked in degreaser pressed against the worm when it is rotating at 16x (with no load on the mount) to remove the old grease, and then just apply a small amount of new grease on the worm. Do people think this would work OK?
