Thread: Mixing Up Greases?

first off for rick130...

its not you cant mix synth and mineral in some (and probably most) cases you can, some mineral oils and synth oils are quite happy to be mixes, some arent. I've run afoul of using they synth brake fluid and the mineral based stuff, It makes a lovely gloopy mess that looks like soap... I wasnt intending to mix them but with low clutch fluid at the time I had to use what I could get.

for Davehoos

From the MSDS breakdown...

it looks like the lipex will do slightly better for inconsistant water exposed use and is a thicker grease having a lithium polymer thickener added where as the delo ep2 achieves much the same result by a "tack" additive...

The difference?

The thickening agent is not designed to make the grease stick (but it will due to an increase in surface cohesion) but to make the grease harder to mechanically disperse. A real world example would be like hand soaps... If you take a cake of soap and press it onto a surface hard enough it will deform to take the shape of the surface, if the surface is shaped enough the soap will hold itself in position. Liquid hand soap will do the same but will run. If you try squeezing either the liqiud soap will dissapear out the sides but the cake of soap wont.

A tacking agent is intended to make the stuff stick to a surface... The closest real world example I can think of is... ummm play dough VS wall paper past... IF you slap a blob of both onto a wall then try to peel them away the playdough will come off as a ball where as the wallpaper paste will leave behind a layer.

The moly grease is not particularly good at water resistance nor Extreme pressure loadings.. What it is good at is hanging around. Moly attracts and attaches itself to EVERYTHING... including any contamination that makes it into the bits its ment to be protecting. To test its sticky spready properties try this,,, get a small dob about the size of a 20c piece and smear it onto your shirt. Now put that shirt in the wash with your wifes favorite outfit. Wash...

I did not tell you to actually do this Its just a suggestion. If I happen to find your testicles afterwards I'll post them back to you.

Dave, I think that grease you use is the same one I have tubes and tubes of here, only mine are so old they're still labelled AMPOL, but when I did a search it came up as the same grease as the green Caltex one, same part number, etc.

I've just been using it as a general purpose grease as i didn't think it would be anything flash, (I inherited it) but if it's working OK and you're getting great life out of your stuff, why change ?
You just might change my mind on it too.

In CV's and sliding spline joints a minimum of 3% moly/lubricating solids are generally recommended, but supposedly moly is bad in cylindrical roller/needle roller bearings.
Having said that I used the Castrol LMM I mentioned above in uni's forever and my uni's have lasted a long, long time.
FWIW CAT claim the platelet size of the moly they use is fine with wheel bearings and uni needle rollers.


If you want real water washout resistance and anti-rust performance you need a calcium sulphonate base.
Aluminium isn't bad either, lithium complexes generally aren't much chop in real watery conditions.

I used to have a pretty trick full synthetic, lithium complex race car wheel bearing grease that had a really high drop point, had a very high load rating and huge service life (both the Land and Patrol have gone several hundred thousand km between repacking) and yet it lasted no time in the horse float as the hubs had pretty average seals and was driven through a river every time it went out and came home.
The bearings were trashed from moisture in no time.

Replaced the grease with Lubrimatic marine wheel bearing grease, a mineral based calcium sulphonate grease and no more problems.

I can't get the Lubrimatic anymore around here so I'm now swapping over to the CAT grease for most everything except the wheel bearings in the Patrol where I'm using Redline CV2 now, but it's a bit exxy for everyday use.

Im doing some on the sly stuff with a new bit of kit thats got quite an exotic grease in it...

from nothing more than a bit of...

"wonder why no-one tried that before, ok what are the base line pros and cons...."

"Well it feels like grease should feel, doesnt wash with dieso or tur.... hrmmm this could be interesting"

I predict that the next big thing in the world of grease is going to be the PFTE greases...


http://www.nulon.com.au/product-bulletin/PB-L90

http://www.nulon.com.au/product-bulletin/PB-L80

ATM Im using the ep, ep2 lipex and the lipex 2 pretty much interchangeably.... And I have a gunned tube of high moly for when Im doing assembly.

The key thing IMHO for the places that landrover use moly is they are low particulate throwing items with large clearance areas with a relatively large fluid capacity....

bite the bullet, you bunch of wusses, and mix in some KY jelly and loctite anti-seize with your grease.

Originally Posted by Brian Hjelm

bite the bullet, you bunch of wusses, and mix in some KY jelly and loctite anti-seize with your grease.

just dont use the resulting concotion anywhere where you'd use the KY?

I've been using Nulon N-90 gear additive for years and years. It even saved a brand new built series gearbox/tfr that was towed in gear (on road) without oil. Gears & bearings were slightly blued, added a full load of nulon, drove (silently) for 500k's, dropped and refilled 50/50 oil/nulon for another 1000 then went to normal fill plus one tube each. Went for over 100000k's with only another oil/additive change at 50000. Pulled down and only changed seals.

I saw the new stuff on the weekend, should be interesting if it's even half as good.

Originally Posted by Blknight.aus

first off for rick130...

its not you cant mix synth and mineral in some (and probably most) cases you can, some mineral oils and synth oils are quite happy to be mixes, some arent. I've run afoul of using they synth brake fluid and the mineral based stuff, It makes a lovely gloopy mess that looks like soap... I wasnt intending to mix them but with low clutch fluid at the time I had to use what I could get.

[snip]

Dave, I said you can't mix PAG's and silicons with 'convetional' mineral and syn (PAO and esters) base oils.
Second line of my reply

Originally Posted by Blknight.aus

[snip]

I predict that the next big thing in the world of grease is going to be the PFTE greases...


[snip]

Hate to break it to you but PTFE fortified greases have been around since the seventies.
Dad was given a container in about 1975 and I still have some.

PTFE is slippery but it doesn't have the EP ability of MoS2 or soluble moly but has it's uses.

DuPont Krytox greases are very well regarded and use polyfluropolyether (PFPE) oils with with PTFE thickeners.

DuPont? Krytox® Lubricants