With my JM motor, I opened it up and cleaned out the gunk with alcohol and Q-tips and then applied a very minute amount of lithium grease for lubrication.

It was dragging and hiccuping but not necessarily loud. There was a ton of gunk in it though, just old solidified grease, etc.

Been putting off cleaning my T2 motor....it's just a tad slow the first few shots if it sits for a week or two...then fine...so for now I've been going with.."if it ain't broke"..you know the rest...............Joey

I ultrasonic cleaned and re-lubed a loud STTNG gearbox without screwing anything up (needed manual cleaning too, lots of grease). How is it different than ultrasonic cleaning anything else?

A gearbox is just a bunch of metal parts. I don't see the harm in an ultrasonic bath. Although, I might do a quick manual cleaning to get rid of the bulk of the gunk first.

Clean with brake parts cleaner (trichloroethylene) but don't breath in the fumes. Lube with Teflon based grease, not lithium grease, as lithium will eventually gunk up.

Mac

I would recommend any non-polar solvent as a soak to get out any of the old grease (good solvents include kerosene(cheap but smells), Coleman stove fuel, paint brush cleaner, and brake parts cleaner that was already recommended). Hopefully with the sticky grease removed any particulate will also come out that is binding the gears and making the noise.

If possible, just put the whole gearbox in a container with solvent for a few days and gently shake it around to clean it out.

Ultrasonic is nice, but I don't like to use a water based cleaner in a part that I am not sure I can get fully dry (if you are not fully disassembling it). Also, I have not had good experiences with ultrasonics being able to disolved thick grease.

I don't know if the gear box has any seals in it, but be careful with brake parts cleaner, it can be rough on seals.

I did this same thing. Cleaned and then had this lithium stringy white grease. Worked great and JM's hand was silent....ahhhhh

You'd take the motor off, wouldn't you? And just clean the gearbox.

I just cleaned and lubed my JM gear box last week. Here is the Teflon-based grease that was recommended to me. It is a bicycle product but worked awesome.

From what I have learned, old gear boxes tend to "throw" the grease off over time, and that is why they are loud and grinding. This product is super sticky.

I wouldn't worry about cleaning the gears with an ultrasonic bath. Seems like over kill. Just clean with Simple Green or a light cleaner and get rid of the old gunky grease.

Are you guys cleaning gearboxes without drilling out the rivets by soaking it in brake fluid? Can you effectively lubricate the gears from the tiny hole?

I'd imagine you can submerge the motor, granted it is dried out properly. Throw it in a toaster oven for a little bit at like 150. They're just coils with magnets after all. Unless it gets gunked up with cleaning solution, should be fine.

m2vzx.jpg

Assuming it is like other Williams WPC gearboxes (I worked on JM), the assembly is held together by two screws. Opens up easily and gives access to the gears.

STTNG has rivets

Check this out, it's MB specific but I found it helpful
http://www.iobium.com/rebuilding_the_monster_bash_drac.htm

That is the stuff!

BSD gearbox is rivetted shot for no fricken reason. I did a sloppy job drilling it out but what idiot thought it should be riveted shut. Every original BSD gearbox sounds like can opener by now because you can't readily clean them out.