Adding Graphite/Gear Box

C

cars56

Senior Member
Watching the Speed Channel yesterday a drag racer added graphite to his gear box. Any one ever try it in their A?
 
600 W steam oil has been used in most Model A's for eighty years and seems to work just fine. If you want to dump some graphite into your gearbox what would you expect the benefit to be ?
 
I have never figured out why anyone would want to use a water soluble "steam" oil, when modern oils are so much better, especially with anti-wear properties? I want to give them ol gears every break I can! Just my opinion.:)
Chuck
 
I doubt it would hurt anything. Graphite is a great anti friction material. Do you remember ARCO graphite engine oil?
 
I do not want to start an "oil" rant as too much has been written about oils and gear lubes in the past. Perhaps I used the wrong term "steam oil" but I have a 5 gallon pail of "Model A Ford Extreme Pressure Gear Oil" the Ford Motor Company sold in 1933. It certainly is not water soluble as it is the stickiest,gooiest, black oil I have ever seen and will not come off your hands without a suitable hand cleaner.It has been used in two of our family's original owned cars for eighty years and a recent look in a trans gear box showed the gears to look like new. Why re-invent the wheel ?
 
I agree with Mike. My ****** still had the same old gear oil, dark and thick with a distinct smell, and the ****** was like NOS inside. I now use Mobil 636 gear oil, and it's thick and sticky also.

That's also why I like MYSTIK JT-6 HIGH TEMP grease. It's so sticky that you can't wipe it off your hands. You need to use gas or a good hand cleaner.
 
I thought the point of "steam oil" was that it resisted being washed off by hot water, making it ideal to lubricate cylinders in steam engines.

Anyway, I have an Argo Graphite oil story. Back when I was in college I had a Suzuki motorcycle. I had heard good things about graphite oil so i decided to give it a try. Unfortunately, the graphite coated the glass oil level sight window on the crankcase and made it opaque. So I drained it out again and replaced it with regular oil, and in doing so knocked over the container of the graphite oil and ended up with a black stain on the concrete garage floor.
 
when i was a foriegn car mechanic the business wanted us to sell a product called HRL, hear resistent lubricant, it was as black as the ace of spades because it contained grafite, ive often wondered if the oil filter traped the grafite. have no idea if the stuff helped or not
 
My little brother and a friend put graphite in the coaster brake on a bicycle when we were little kids. Dan said it destroyed everything in the coaster brake. After that I have stayed away from graphite.
 
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