School me on detergents

[ebausch]

I tend to use synthetic motor oil for everything, including as a firearms lube and as way oil on my metal lathe. I have been cautioned against using an oil that contains detergents, like motor oil, for both purposes but no one has known why.

As I understand it detergents prevent containments from adhering to metal surfaces, keeping them in suspension, until they can be filtered out. It seems to me this would be a benefit particularly for firearms use.

The purpose of this post is to learn what negative properties detergents give an oil for applications such as firearms lube and way oil.

Thanks in advance for any insight you can give me.

 

[rg200amp]

I would not use motor oil for fire arm lube.

Motor oil is made to battle the combustion process ( fuel, heat, condensation, pressure, acids, ect...) while providing protection to moving parts.

A fire arm dose not need motor oil. any good name brand gun cleaner, and then a gun oil should be used.

some guns do not even like alot of oil to begin with. Glocks for one like small every other cleaning oilings.


Motor oil has A LOT of additives that a fire arm dose not need or want.

 

[Steve S]

Seems a fire arm has many of the same metal things[condensation,heat, pressure ,acidsand moving parts}as an engine as far as oil is concerned.

 

[ZZman]

Using too much oil attracts dust and dirt which can gum up firearms. Very little should be used and only in key areas.

 

[ebausch]

I agree motor oil has many additives that a firearm does not need but keep in mind a combustion process takes place each time a gun is fired too and the oil is directly exposed to the byproducts of it.

I am not fishing for someone to tell me it is OK to use motor oil in a firearm if it is not. I am looking to learn what it is, about the additive package in motor oil (particularly detergents), that would cause poor, or not as good, performance in a firearm in terms of lubrication and performance that could include things such as providing a barrier against corrosion or drying out in storage etc.

I personally think firearms are very demanding of a lubricant. There are lots of shearing forces on slide rails and bolts, there is significant shock applied to some parts like the hammer pin , there is nothing to contain the lube on parts that move and change direction quickly, some of mine also get exposed to the elements. Gun specific oils are overpriced, there is no disclosure of what is in them and many contain PTFE, nothing more than a gimmick with oil products. This and the hype with many gun specific oils causes me great skepticism.

I do appreciate the response and hope to see more.

 

[tom slick]

I think it would be more appropriate to use way oil on a gun then motor oil. That would fix both of your applications.

The problem is finding way oil in less then a 5 gallon pail.

 

[1WildPig]

Nothing wrong with using engine oil on a firearm, it's been done for decades. Synthetic oil is all the better but not necessary. My favorite mix is ATF with a little STP added but I have used synthetic oil with STP and just ATF and just synthetic oil as well as regular oil...also added a tiny bit of MMO to the mix too.

Many years ago, my Uncle was an authorized Browning repair man and while talking to a company technician about a particular problem with a Browning firearm he asked them what oil they used...their reply was "30 weight"...he said "30 weight, you mean motor oil?"...they said "yep"...after more thought, he inquired, "what about that Browning gun oil that y'all sell?" their reply was "we make that to sell!"

After hearing this story and seeing his success as a gunsmith, I have always used some type of automotive oil when lubing my firearms. I've never had a problem with my firearms and have solved many other peoples functioning problems with a proper cleaning and lube. I believe that just about any lubricant will work as long as it's of the proper viscosity for your environment - don't want something too thick in cold weather or too thin in hot weather. As far as corrosion protection, synthetic engine oil works very well but whatever is used and how often it's used depends on the exposure of the firearm...for my environment, even good ol WD40 works very well to keep my firearms looking new.