digitaltrucker

Thanks for the lesson, for now the action I have taken has worked for me and I still have some left.

KOZ45

Great info to know

$7 shipped for a 3 ounce tube is cheap too

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Sta-Lube-Mo...MAAOSwqfNXl402

Or $13 shipped for a 14 ounce tube:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/sta-lube-sl...8AAOSwED5ZzxD1

STingray1300

I buy the 3-packs of the 3oz tubes, I think about $10 at the local parts store. I also have a tub, that has lasted me about 5 years so far.

All about the "deal", right?

antony1103

Another update, I have about 20k miles after applying the Neolube and my click/bump has yet to return.

We are getting some warmer weather here in the next week, so I am thinking about taking the axle off to inspect the yoke and see how well the Neolube held up. If all looks well, I'm going to remove the old stuff and apply a fresh coat, but this time I am NOT going to add the Ford PTFE grease. This will be a good test as to whether the Neolube is actually helping, or I just did a good job greasing with the PTFE last time...

Unfortunately, I bought a beater Honda Civic a few months ago as my DD, so I'm not putting 4k miles a month on the truck anymore. It may be much longer between my updates, but I plan on reporting back my experiences every 5k miles or so.

digitaltrucker

12 20 16 with 53600 did mine with the Ford PTFE only, now have 73K and no return of bump.

Blown F-150

Just to throw another option out there, I used this a replacement for Iso Flex grease when building Snowmobile motors.

Due to it's intended use, I figured I would try it on my slip yoke. 10k miles and no return of the bump.

Maybe some of the experts here can let me know if it's the wrong application.

https://www.aircraftspruce.ca/catalo...ilGrease28.php

clm65

Just out of curiosity, did you coat the mating surface (male spline) on the transfer case with Neolube too? Or just the driveshaft side? I'm in the process of doing mine, and not sure how good of a job I'll be able to do with the limited access to the male splines.

antony1103

FWIW, I have a good working knowledge on grease/lubricants from the day to day work in my job, but I'm no expert. Take my following rant for what its worth...

Looking at you're link, I wouldn't hesitate to give it a try. Being wax-free and its talk of low-temp performance, it should at least be comparable to the Ford stuff. The higher the viscosity, the better. Where they talk about pumpability and bearing lubrication concerns me, since it seems Mobil had a very specific intention for this grease (bearings and rolling contact), and a slip yoke is very different from that.

In general, greases and other heavy lubes need steady and consistent sliding contact to ensure proper lubrication. Its the shear force between two surfaces that builds up a boundary layer of grease that keeps the surfaces from contact/binding. Without a constant velocity gradient within the grease, it simply gets squeezed out of the joint, which is what I think is happening to most of the slips yokes with the bump/click. You'll see many slip yokes get coated with nickel, which naturally has a low coefficient of friction, and does not need any velocity gradient to sustain any lubrication within the joint. Slip yokes are a reciprocating joint, meaning at some point or another, they stop completely during their cycle. That means no shear forces within the joint, no velocity gradient, and no (read little) lubrication boundary between the sliding surfaces.

I can't read Ford engineers' minds (or their technical justifications), but I feel the PTFE lube is a low cost solution to slip yoke binding that works 99% of the time for our application. For those of us that are unlucky enough to get the bump (probably due to off-nominal machining and stress concentration which forces the lube out of the joint prematurely), we are forced to re-lube, replace the yoke, or experiment to find another solution.

Since I've been lucky enough to have had bump since early on, which would not go away even when re-applying the Ford PTFE lube, I decided to experiment using this knowledge. Obviously, a grease was not working for me, so I decided to go with something that does not require relative movement between the surfaces to maintain a low friction environment, which in my mind better fits the application of our slip yokes.

End rant. Sorry, and I hope I helped answer your question.

antony1103

I did not coat the male spline, just the driveshaft side. Coating both would have been ideal, but like you said, it would have been tough to get to, and I would have had a hard time getting things clean. Surface prep is #1 priority when using this stuff, so I didn't waste my time trying to coat a surface I couldn't adequately clean or coat evenly.

STR8JAKT

Well after about 10k miles the bump is starting to creep back. Ill have to do a better job cleaning it up and apply another coat to it. Bottom line ford stuff would last 2k tops, the neolube has made an obvious difference.