HMV pre-1921 two spring motor

[JerryVan]

What Soundgen means is that oil will make coils adhere to each other due to surface tension, and slip rather than separate evenly. Personally, I always strictly follow his advice and never add oil to my coil mixture.

I understand that many people add oil and say it's allright and they're happy with the results; but again, I prefer to strictly follow Soundgen's advice, and actually I make molybdenum grease even less fluid by mixing graphite paste with it.

Marco,

Not meaning to be contrary. I agree with you, and with Soundgen as well. Just adding some background info. As I stated, "...when using new grease, no additional oil should be needed, as the grease is presumably manufactured with the optimal oil content already mixed in." Additionally, old grease has done its job and needs to be removed.

[bikesteve]

I made the mistake of not thoroughly cleaning the inside face of a spring before (a new one at that with a few sticky rust spots!) which I'm pretty sure contributed to bumping early on. Best results just lately, add a few drops of sewing machine oil allowing to soak a day then adding Mobil 1 Fully Synthetic.

You should never ever put oil into spring barrels

I guess time will tell, but at the moment 3 months in with a hundred or so windings and the spring's as happy as... (it really was only 3 drops of oil after all!)