W8SDZ@SIMTEL20.ARPA (Keith Petersen) (04/21/85)
The following was recently seen on Ward Christensen's personal bulletin board system (312-849-1132) and is relayed here for its informational value. --Keith From: Ward Christensen To: All Re: Squealing diskettes solved A month or so back I solicited opinions on squealing diskettes. Yesterday I solved it with a replace of the PRESSURE PAD on the Shugart 801 drives. I also WD-40'd the stepper lead screw, and now seeking is as smooth as velvet, IN SPITE of maintenance people's advice to leave it "dry" so it doesn't attract dust. From: Gary Elfring To: Ward Christensen Re: WD-40 and Shugart I have lubricated my lead screws for a number of years. One of my drives started acting up and I noticed that it was very hard to manually move the lead screw. I cleaned the screw completely with a freon based solvent and then lubricated with a light machine oil. This speeded up disk access significantly! Anyway, the choice of lubricant makes a BIG difference. After about 6 months I had to go clean and relubricate the screw. It got all gummed up. This time I used a silicon based spray product. That attracted less dirt and lasts about a year. Cleaning and spraying once a year doesn't bother me much. It also a good idea to check the pressure pads at least once a year. As they wear out the disk reads and writes become less reliable.
STORK@mit-mc.ARPA (Eric Stork) (04/23/85)
Keith: I dug deeply into drive screw lubrication issues a few years ago, and received advice from the vendor of my system to use ONLY a Teflon-based lubricant, and that very sparingly. I've used TRI-FLOW for years on my and friends 801s, with no problems. For what that may be worth. Eric