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Old timer at the union hall told me to stop greasing guide rails by eye and actually measure the film thickness
After getting a callback on a job in downtown Boston where the car was chattering on every floor, I picked up a $40 ultrasonic thickness gauge and found out I was putting on nearly triple the grease I needed, anyone else been running blind on their rail lubrication?
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leor374mo ago
Listen, I get that the old timers have their ways but is it really that deep? I mean yeah chatter is annoying but triple the grease seems like a lot until you think about it. You ran that job for who knows how long before the gauge told you anything different. Guides aren't some high tolerance part where a few microns makes or breaks the ride. Most of the time a heavy hand on the grease gun is just keeping things quiet and preventing wear anyway. I've seen guys overthink rail lube and still have cars that bounce like a basketball because the real problem was something else like a bad shoe or a warped rail. So you spent forty bucks on a gauge, good for you, but I bet you still grease it by eye half the time when you're in a hurry. Just saying, sometimes a little extra is better than not enough and a chattering car on a callback is worse than a greasy guide rail.
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lily5744mo ago
Nail on the head with that last point about callbacks being worse than a greasy mess. I've been on jobs where they packed the rail so tight it looked like a butter sculpture and still had to go back because the car was bouncing off the door tracks. The real issue ended up being a worn out roller guide that was grabbing on one side. You can slather all the lube you want on a rail but it won't fix mechanical slop underneath. Sometimes the heavy hand just masks the deeper problem until it gets worse.
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