Lubricating those 400k floppy drives is a PAIN IN THE @$$!

[olePigeon]

Wow.  It's like they're welded stuck.  I cleaned and lubricated 3 floppies today, and boy do my fingers hurt.

The swiveling pin thing that lets the tray drop when you insert a floppy disk seems to be the worst part, although in one of the floppy drives, the entire ejecting metal structure was glued.  I could not get it to move.

In all three cases I ran them under really, really hot water, and that seemed to loosen them up a bit.  Some new lithium grease, and I worked those mechanisms for a solid 10 minutes each.  Man, they just did not want to move.

I got 2 out of 3 of the drives working.  The 3rd one worked for 2 disk inserts, but then suddenly decided it didn't want to read disks anymore and would always ask to initialize.

 

[unity]

I have two stuck bad cause someone used lithium probably back when the machine was young and went in for service. Both its internal and external. I really am not a fan of lithium cause it can dry out and get rock hard making it hell to remove. My go-to is 4 in 1 oil. Its cheap, cleans up easy and refreshes well. When factory new 4 in 1 oil probably would not be best for heavy use under hours of heat. But from a preservation/collection standpoint its all I use.

 

[techknight]

I use zoom spout. 

 

[Elfen]

I used Naphta to dissolve the old grease and get things loose again.

 

[fri0701]

I've always started off by using a Q-tip and rubbing alcohol to remove the old grease. After several passes, the drive moves normally again.

 

[aplmak]

Yeah I've used the q-tip and rubbing alcohol to break down the old grease... it works well... takes a little while.. You have to get the alcohol under the metal arms... there is old grease hiding behind it.. it usually takes a while to get it all out.. after you keep sliding the arm more appears. Finally I have done silicone on one or two.. the others I've put nothing on it... and they work great.. Keep in mind I'm not using the floppy drive as I would on a daily basis.. So I don't think it's no big deal if it's not lubed at all. If there's nothing it shouldn't ever bind again!

 

[Paralel]

Well, technically, its possible that heat and friction alone can cause the gears to seize to one another.

 

[CC_333]

What I've done to clean out 400k drive mechanisms is to simply dismantle the whole thing that the disk slides into (the part most often affected by hardened grease), so the heads, electronics and base are separate (and protected from liquid damage), and then I take the mechanism to the kitchen sink, squirt a bunch of dish soap on it, and scrub it with a nylon-bristled brush. Then, once everything's working somewhat, I disassemble it further and scrub some more, adding more soap as needed.

Then, once it's all rinsed and dried off, I wipe it down with isopropyl alcohol wipes to remove all traces of old grease. Then I put small amounts of fresh lithium grease on any metal-to-metal sliding surfaces, and reassemble.

I do the same thing on the 800k-1440k auto-inject drives, and it seems to work equally as well on these.

It's not really a pain to me doing it this way (plus it's actually more thorough I think), though it does require more work to disassemble/reassemble everything.

c

 

[BadGoldEagle]

I just re-lubed 2 of my 400k drives yesterday.

I used some rubbing alcohol as well as Q-tips.

Both of them were completely stuck and my internal one was stuck in the "down" position but without a floppy. Don't ask me why I don't know how this is even possible without removing the drive from the computer. And the 128k was factory sealed. No one opened it before I did. Odd.

Then I applied the lube with a silicon spray. Super effective! Took me 4 hours to re-lube the two drives.

Now it's a piece of cake, disks are injected and ejected properly. That was easier than I thought.

I did not test them with my Mac though. I really hope they work. The wheels that move the eject mechanism looked fine. We'll know next week-end.

 

[olePigeon]

You had a factory sealed 128k Mac? :O

 

[BadGoldEagle]

No I meant the case was not opened before. The way I wrote this (in a hurry) could indeed lead to confusion.

I bought it from one guy who bought it from its first owner (a school principal it seems). Neither of them bothered to open the machine to repair it. The screws were intact. 100% black. Plus it was a real pain in the @$$ to open, unlike most of my macs... 

And this computer was never used. Floppy drive head looks new. No scratches on the unit, no wear at all on the original keyboard etc. It really looked new, apart from old fir needles here and there... Maybe there'a a tree expert here who can tell how old those needles were but I'm pretty sure everything is original on this machine.

I don't know how the drive managed to glue itself together in the "down" position. It's not possible to do so except if you insert a floppy or work your way to the little tab inside the drive with a pen or something... And the floppy or pen would have been stuck in there. Anyway...

DAMN if I had a factory sealed 128k box, I would have kept it unopened. I don't know if it's even possible to find one.

By the way, since this Mac has some corrupted RAM chips, I can't test the drives with it. I will send the board over to Uni for a Re-Ram but can it test them in a Plus? I think I can.

And I have a couple of original 128k/512k disquettes (don't know yet what system they have, never tested them) but I won't corrupt them if I put them inside a 400k drive on a Mac Plus, right? Should I try to boot from the 400k disk and then copy its contents to a fresh 400k formatted 800k? Or boot from 3.2 and then copy them over to a new disk?

I will try the drives with a 400k format of a 800k floppy, do a write test and test them with the 800k before attempting anything with the original disks.

 Tell me what you think? (I hope I'm not hijacking the thread btw  ;D

 

[trag]

I also have used alcohol and q-tip effectively and it did not seem so arduous. On the other hand that was 18 years ago, so, perhaps, the mechanism was not as glued as yours. I had two new packaged Apple Service Parts 400k drives and by 1997 the lubricant was varnish and the mechanisms were frozen.

 

[billymade]

I just used these two products this week with great success; I am hoping the synthetic grease will not get hardened up over time and work in a superior way (not deteriorate like lithium grease). The CRC electronic cleaner; doesn't hurt plastics and it is great to clean switches and sticky mechanisms. I also used 91% Isopropyl Alcohol, q tips and toothpicks, to clean things up and apply the synthetic grease. 

CRC 5103 Quick Dry Electronic Cleaner - 11 Wt Oz. (auto parts stores, walmart, home improvement stores, etc.)

https://www.google.com/search?q=CRC+5103+Quick+Dry+Electronic+Cleaner+-+11+Wt+Oz.&oq=CRC+5103+Quick+Dry+Electronic+Cleaner+-+11+Wt+Oz.&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i60&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

Super Lube 21030 Synthetic Grease (NLGI 2), 3 oz Tube (Harbor Freight)

https://www.google.com/search?q=Super+Lube+21030+Synthetic+Grease+(NLGI+2)%2C+3+oz+Tube&oq=Super+Lube+21030+Synthetic+Grease+(NLGI+2)%2C+3+oz+Tube&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i60&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8