Gear Oil

[Bob Reda]

Changing the oil in my Delta DC-380 and it calls for "Extreme pressure gear oil"
Delta wants $18 per pint and it is backordered. Does anyone know what this is other than extreme pressure gear oil?

[martyphee]

Some 80wt gear oil is probably just fine. Find some synthetic oil. That was I use in my Delta 18" wedgebed planer.

[Ken Garlock]

Bob, I would call the Delta service center nearest to you, and find out what is the nearest automotive gear oil. It seems that a standard differential oil would be more than sufficient. I doubt that the chains and sprockets on your planer have anything near the abuse that is found in a differential. I agree that a synthetic oil is the way to go.

Remember what you paid for this....

[Dev Emch]

I never buy stuff like this from Delta or others. Then again, most of my machine makers are pushing up daisys.

At any rate, go to the phone book and look up your local industrial oil dealer. I use mobil because they are convenient. You could use Sunny, Shell, Conoco, BP, Gargoyle (sp?), etc.

Also, call up Delta technical support and chew them out! What in the heck do you mean by "Extreme Pressure Gear Oil"? Like that is a standard. What is the viscosity of this stuff? Any additives? What is your operating environment like? If you need a synthetic oil, then Delta needs to tell you this ASAP. In certain cases, helical gearing can generate high pressure loads which will benefit from synthetic oil.

I am looking at a bottle of Mobil 1 Synthetic Gear Lubricant. It is 1 quart in size. It is listed as SAE 75W-90 Synthetic Gear Lubricant. It says its great for hypoid differentials and transmissions where an API GL-5 lubricant is needed. As I recall, this stuff was about $20 dollars per quart. Ask Delta if this stuff will work. Good news is you can buy this in quarts and not 5 gallon drums.

Now certain cases will require very expensive oil. The oil used in a dodge NV-4500 transmission costs about $80 dollars per quart. It lasts forever so you get your money out of it eventually. But here is the deal. The sycros in this transmission are not brass. They are some other stuff that gets eaten away by sulfer compounds and what not in regular oils. The oil formulated for this transmission application takes this into account.

If you change oils, make sure your gear box does not have some wacky plastic gizzmo that gets eaten up by regular gear oil. I dont trust any of the newer machines and would not be surprised if the delta oil is unqiquely formuated because of this. If the design is old school, than you can use alls sorts of oil and not even bother with synthetic.

So make that call to delta's service department!

[Bob Reda]

Thanks guys. I've been calling them over 3 days now and after the 15 minute automated messages, nobody there seems to know what's in this stuff. i don't see any plastic in the gears and chain other than the gasket.

[Dev Emch]

This is typical of the new asian made machines. **YOU** should have gotten a docment that contains instructions on lubrication. This would include a description of the oils and greases needed and the frequency by which these need to be changed and or applied.

American made machines always had metal tags which had this info engraved on it. My porter jointer has about four or five different oil vendors on this etched tag including gargoyle, a company I have never heard of. The viscosity data is also listed.

The fact that they are not listing this information is clear that they are buying the oil from mobil or others in 55 gallon drums and repacking it into tiny bottles and selling this at extremely high mark ups.

The gasket is not going to be susceptable to oil component disolution. You said you looked inside this gear box. What is in there? Sounds like some steel gears and a steel chain. If I were in your shoes, I would just go out and buy that mobil 1 oil and tell the mobile dealer that you are using it for "Extreme Pressure Gear Applications". Most likely, he will say sure, no problem. It is a synthetic blend designed for exactly this situation. A heavy duty hypoid differential is a worse case than your little planer gear box. Most likely, the mobil oil is over kill for you, but who cares, you have spent 3 days chasing these dawgs down. Enough is enough. I would think twice before buying from them again!!!!!

[Joseph O'Leary]

Extreme pressure gear oils, or EP gear oil, are very common and are a specific class of gear oil, and grease. The EP additives provide just that, protection for sliding metal surfaces from seizing under conditions of extreme pressure. If the manufacturer requires an EP oil that is what should be used. On the other hand if EP is not called for it should not be used. The most common EP additive is sulfur-phosphorus. This additive will corrode, or dissolve, any "yellow metal" in the gear box ( brass, bronze, copper). There are some EP oils that have a metal deactivator that helps to prevent corrosion of the copper based alloys. As stated in other replies, a synthetic base oil is superior to a non-syntheticl base stock when you are looking for viscosity (thickness) stability. A synthetic oil will take much, much longer to show any viscosity breakdown. This is not a substitute for an EP additive. As for the weight of the oil, an SAE 85 to 90 weight gear oil , or a multi vis 80w-90 would work fine. This would correspond to about an ISO 68 to ISO 150. Most automotive stores carry EP gear oil in both synthetic and non-synthetic, and in several viscosities. I would use a synthetic if they have it, but if you are changing the oil once a year like Delta says to, any name brand non-synthetic EP oil will work just fine. Chevron makes Delo 80w-90 non-synthetic EP oil and Chevron Tegra ISO 150 synthetic EP oil, just to name two. I hope this helps!

[Dan Forman]

Nothing to add, other than I never cease to be amazed at the depth of the knowlege in this place.

Dan

[Dev Emch]

Joseph...

Your response was just awsome! I really found that helpful.

On my mobil one bottle, it does talk about how the oil minimizes spalling. Is spalling the same as "seizing" as used in your post context?

So wouldnt brass syncros be subject to the effects of sulfur-phosphorus? As I recall, I was told that my syncros were not brass and would "disolve" under normal synthetic gear oil. That I had to buy this "special stuff" which was formulated differently. Several off road places confirmed this as did New Venture Gear. I was not happy with the price of this stuff as it was about 3 times as expensive as the usual synthetic and that is more expensive than the old stand by. I am wondering now if my syncros are indeed brass and that the difference was this "metal deactivator" you talked about.

O.K. I found it. Its better to have a bottle in front of me than a frontal labotomy. Reading the bottle.. "Mobil 1 Synthetic Gear Lubricant is a race proven 100% synthetic product that outperforms all conventional extreme pressure type gear lubricants". The weight is a multi weight listed as 75W-90.

So barring any brass thingies, this should work. Right? So brass would occur where? Bearing cages? Bronze or brass bushings? Anywhere else?

Again, thanks for the post. This was helpful!

[Joseph O'Leary]

Hi guys! hope all this lube stuff is helpful.
Mobile 1 Synthetic Gear Lubricant LS 75W-90 is an outstanding synthetic EP gear oil that does contain a sulfur/phosphorous additive package. It is also formulated to have excellent corrosion protection for copper and its alloys. It would be an excellent choice for the Delta planer. As for EP additives creating problems with copper alloys, that is a given. Many of the new gear oils and greases have stabilizers to reduce this problem, also the alloys themselves vary in their resistance to corrosion. It is always important to meet the manufactures recommendations for SAE or API specs. If, however an EP oil is called for by all means use one. There may be copper alloys in there but the manufacturer knows that and is aware of his alloys and the effect of a s/p add pack. The problem arises when an EP oil is not called for and you use one. Failure is imminent . The Mobile 1 Gear Lube product spec sheet states that it should not be used in automatic or manual gear boxes that call for engine oil or automatic transmission fluid. These oils do not contain a s/p add pack and would be compatible with that type of gear box.
As for the "Gargoyle" oil company I have never heard of them either. Is it possible that it says "Glygoyle" ? If it does, that would make sense. Mobile makes Mobile Glygoyle HE series of oil. They are high performance, synthetic polyalkylene glycol lubricants specially designed for worm gear sets. They use a proprietary EP/anti wear pack that I do not believe contains s/p. The only problem is they are not compatible with mineral oils. So if you change over to them you must flush the gear box
Spalling is not the same as seizing. Seizing is what you get when you don't use an EP additive when you need one. Seizing is the actual welding of small portions of opposing gear teeth. At the high local temperature of tooth contact the EP additive chemically combines with the metal to form a surface film that prevents this welding from taking place. Spalling takes place at extremely high loads that will fail (crush) the tempered surface and fail the underlaying substrate of the gear. The net result is chips of metal flaking off the pitch line of the gear. Some of these chips can be quite deep. This can take place it the presence of an inadequate lubricant that either looses film strenght and/or does not have a sufficient load carry additive package.