Greeting Everybody! Today I opened my walkman to give it a clean, and wow in just a couple of months of use, there was a surprising amount of fluff. Anyways I figured while I have it opened I'll lubricate the motor. The first time I opened my walkman to replace the belts, I applied a drop of sewing machine oil on the front bearing. But ever since, Ive been unsure if that's the correct lubricant to use. The motor runs fine (touch wood). Is is safe to use sewing machine oil? The only lubricants I have at the moment is: Sewing Machine oil, WD40, Wurth HHS Dry Lube spray (Dry synthetic Wax) (Used in High speed motor bearings, Bike chains, etc) Which Lubricant out of the 3 is recommend to use? Is Lubricating the front of the motor enough? Appreciate a Reply Cheers!
Best oil to use for walkman is watch oil and this is very important if you are lubricating a high end walkman like DD9 or D6C, but for WM-3 or TPS-L2 its ok to use different oil. Its not ideal but will work.,
Sewing Oil been mentioned more than once as being Bad for our needs - that it clots over the years. Personally, I have zero trust in 'recommended oils' since my younger days of restoring ZEISS/Leitz microscope objectives - the infamous 'tank grease' used by Carl Zeiss Jena actually dissolved the brass parts, but even in ZEISS-WestGermany objectives the damage from the oils they used was pretty horrible! @Alim - There is a chance you have yet another oil in your household Synthetic Motor Oil: 5W30 is what I have in my old Saab to add between 'oil changes'. Professionals at tapeheads.net once mentioned that it is much better than the original oils for capstans (steel-to-sintered brass). Not to be used for plastic parts!!!!!! For plastic-to-metal oils I recently used SuperLube. One of my friends, @enryfox who bought one of my restored Discmans had noticed that oil which I used for the sled gears (recommended as the best for ZEISS objectives) had gone Bad, and he recommended using Dow Corning oil. This is what I am trying now, but only time will tell what happens in 3-5 years... I put a few of my oiled Discmans aside to see what happens to brass-plastic in a few years... yes! I am optimistic to live that long
I really do appreciate your helpful advice. In fact I do have some synthetic 5W-40 motor oil! Im sure that will be a great lubricant for the capstan. There are only plastic gears and I read that lithium grease is ideal for plastic. Do you recommend adding a tiny drop of motor oil on the motor bearing? If so, can I use 90% IPA and clean the motor bearing and then add a tiny drop of motor oil? Cheers!
@Alim I personally prefer to lubricate the motor bearing when possible (say when possible because sometimes there is very little clearance between the pulley and the motor body and it's very difficut to put oil in), because it will prolong the life of the motor. Many come with little to no lubricant from the factory so I think it's always a good idea to do it, especially after 30-40 years. I would not lubricate plastic gears, unless they are noisy. I also own a WM-3 and the only things that I have lubricated are the following: capstan bushing, small flywheel bushing, motor bushing and table reels. I did it as a matter of maintenance, as the mechanism was extremely quiet before; in fact it's one of the quietest I have seen in a walkman. @Jorge Very interesting story with your experience in repairing ZEISS/Leitz microscope objectives. Even Sony seems to have made bad choices regarding grease to a lot of mechanisms. I made some research recently about the Sony TCD-D8 DAT walkman (I will be restoring one in the near future and share it in the forum) and came to the conclusion that most of the problems for which people throw them in the garbage is dried up grease. I watched a youtube video with someone diassembling the entire mechanism, cleaning the old grease and relubricating it with watch oil, exactly as @Boodokhan recommended. Needless to say that the walkman mechanism worked fantastic after this. The watch oil seems to be very thin compared to any other oil. A datasheet that I have read also mentions a very high viscosity index. This means the mechanisms lubricated with it should work very well on a wide temperature variation.
Sorry, although it was right in front of me I forgot to mention White Lithium Grease. It should be OK for plastic and plastic-to-metal, at least it has not dried up or morphed into goo on any of the 30+y.o. Discmans that I repaired. +1 to what @Valentin said about motors'n' oils. Ever since I tarnished the platter of my beloved Linn Sondek with IPA, I do not use IPA or Ethanol unless I must. Just wipe motor shaft and the bushing with some cotton on a toothpick, then put a droplet of oil and let it seep inside.
