--- Naz_David <naz_david@msn.com> wrote:

Thanks Tyler and Kurt, I might get hold of some the Dow Corning offering next week. Kurt, will let you know how I get on, have used 85oct gas as a degreaser, might also get hold of some acetone (memories of undergraduate labs over twenty years ago!) to really clean things up to address the contamination issue you mention.

I don't know the answer to the one on what are reasonable and techniques to minimize contamination of the grease. Maybe our resident machinists, diveboss and Chuck Hards, will have an opinion. The guy on the net who seems to be furtherest along on this is: http://www.jamesrobertcook.co.uk/EQ6_dismantle.htm His photos show the dismantling and regreasing of a Synta mount. He appears to just use white gas for a degreaser. By contamination of the grease, I believe the main issue is making sure you soak the parts fully to remove all the old bad grease. Otherwise, you will end up with mini-grinding balls made up of the old grease suspended in the new lithium grease when the weather gets cold. Apparently, it's tough to get all the old grease off the internal mount parts. "Contamination" may also refer to the residual white gas left on the parts after degreasing. I was planning to wipe the dry white gas degreased parts down with a damp cloth to remove the last of the white gas and then blow-dry them. But again, maybe our resident machinsts may have some experienced based advice. I notice in one of the photos, James Cook is wearing Latex gloves during assembly, but probably to keep his hands clean as opposed to preventing contamination of the new grease. All of this may be over-the-top carefulness - treating dismantling the mount like it was surgery. But like most amateurs, dismantling a mount is a sizeable and intimidating project, fraught with concern that you might introduce tracking errors by dismantling it. I'm planning to do everything to make sure that I only dismantle the mount only one time. That's the best I can put together. You know what I know. Happy New Year - Canopus56(Kurt) __________________________________ Yahoo! for Good - Make a difference this year. http://brand.yahoo.com/cybergivingweek2005/