Armature plate support grease

[bob-d]

What is everyone using to grease the armature plate support, and retaining ring?
There was a YouTuber who mentioned that Evinrude recommended a mix of moly lube and motor oil. Never heard that one. If that is correct, would anyone know the mixture?
Thanks,
Bob D

[Mumbles]

I seem to remember the recipe for moly grease was one drop of oil to a small amount of moly grease, just enough to thin it out a bit.  Whatever it was, I never use moly anymore and just use a light coating of a thin light grease. My daily driver now is the green Lucas Xtra Heavy Duty Wheel Bearing Grease which is thin and has no fibres in it to get hard when the weather is cold. It seems to work OK.

You have to remember that these bearing surfaces are in the ground path for the spark plugs so cleaning any tarnish off with fine grit paper first will help the electrons flow. What you don’t want to use is a dielectric (non conducting) grease of any kind as it will act as an insulator.

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bob-d

[frankr]

Biggest mistake people do is slather on too much grease.  It just splatters out and fouls the points.  Just a thin smear is all it takes.

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bob-d

[fleetwin]

Yep, it is a delicate balance for sure.    The “recipe” you heard about the moly lube and the TCW3 oil is for the engines that use the mag plate/timer base that has the plastic bushing around the outer diameter.  Use the moly lube on the pilot bushing, and a thin coating of TCW3 on the plastic bushing.

I use a very thin coat of the moly lube on the standard mag bushings as well.

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bob-d

[billw]

I have been using Mercury 2-4-C with Teflon. It’s a fairly thinnish, yellow/brown grease that kind of reminds me of the old OMC type A. I just use it because I thought it “looked” period correct, and I have plenty of it. I haven’t had any problems.

Long live American manufacturing!

[bob-d]

Thanks everyone for the tips.
Bill I have some of the Mercury 2-4-C that I use on my Merc inline six, so I’ll use a thin coat of that.
Dug through an old 33HP OMC (white cover) service manual, and they said to use OMC Type A, so as Bill said, should be close enough.
Never knew what Jim said about those parts being an electrical conductor for the plugs!
I got paranoid, and scrubbed all of the old hard grease off them, and even popped them into the ultrasonic cleaner.
That should give me a good clean starting point.

Bob D

[crosbyman]

if you are really worried ……..run a flexing  braid  wire between the armature plate and  the engine body for 100%….continuity    0 ohms

12 Strands Copper Speaker Lead Wire, Wire Replacement for Speaker Suitable for 8~10 inch Speakers,Subwoofer Repair Braided Lead Wire(1m) : Amazon.ca: Electronics

grease or not  you will have  a full circuit to the plugs

Joining AOMCI has priviledges 🙂

[bob-d]

Crosbyman, don’t think I’ll go that far……but in order for a good spark connection I did pick up some Dow Corning 4 DC4 silicone insulating compound for the connection between the coil, and spark plug wire. It was mentioned in the Johnson big red book, and I’m a sucker for stuff in tubes/ tubs.

Bob D

[Mumbles]

If you ever install a ground wire, try and get a length of scrap elevator cable.  It’s composed of many insulated mutistrand   wires and is meant to flex as it coils up in the pit as the elevator goes up and down. The stuff I have is about 16G and it works great for a ground wire on a magneto plate which is costantly going back and forth.

[frankr]

While it is true that the mount is the ground return, it’s nothing to get paranoid about.  The high spark voltage has no problem jumping across any resistance.

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