Tripod Head Lube???

[jovo]

My Bogen/Manfrotto 3047 pan-tilt head has become very balky of late, especially the vertical axis, and particularly when cold (although it's pretty reluctant indoors as well). When I move it up and down quickly for a while it loosens up a bit because I assume the friction has heated whatever lubricant is still there. My question is whether I should give it a shot of WD-40, or spray oil, or 30 weight for that matter, or is there a procedure to take it apart and use some other substance on it....some sort of grease or what?

Thanks for any help you can offer!

 

[BrianShaw]

I have similar problem, but haven't yet had the time to do anything about it. My 3047 is about 20 years old and has become very difficult to "tighten up". I have to turn the handles very, very tight to get the head to keep from slipping. I don't really know if there is any grease in it or not. I thought maybe it needs to be cleaned out... to get rid of whatever grease/dirt may be causing the slipping. I, too, hope someone has some good and knowledgable words of wisdom.

p.s. Out on the Manfrotto web site I saw some exploded diagrams of thier products. Unfortuantely I can't recall the URL, but I did copy the file for the 3047 and other B/M products I use. If you can't find it yourself let me know and I can send the file to you. No step-by-step assy/disassy instructions or lube specs, but at least you can see how it's all held together.

 

[fotch]

I would not use WD-40. You might try calling tech support at Bogen and ask what they use. I would think grease of some kind rather than oil.

 

[resummerfield]

I would disassemble it entirely and carefully clean all the contact and wear points, before adding any lube. It is probably just dirty.

 

[John Koehrer]

I don't have a b/m head in front of me but usually access to the hardware needing to be removed is under the decorator plate with logos or other decoration. It should be a pretty straight forward operation once you can see the boltheads.
Possum fat or any other viscous grease will work for lube.

 

[wclavey]

I disassembled my tripod head last year because I could not lock it down essily without cranking on the knobs. It turned out that, like Eric Summerfield said above, it was just an accumulation of dirt in the spaces that would otherwise compress causing it to lock in place. Removing the dirt with a small jewlers screwdriver as a prod and fresh dusting of graphite made it work as smooth as new, and I bought it in 1979! I hesitated to use any kind of grease or oil on it since I was living in northern CT and the cold made everything freeze up, but with the graphite and a good cleaning, it was fine. Now that I have moved back to TX, the graphite lubrication is still working great.

 

[BrianShaw]

I don't have a b/m head in front of me but usually access to the hardware needing to be removed is under the decorator plate with logos or other decoration.

According to the B/M "engineering drawings" from their web site, this is a very true statement.

 

[BrianShaw]

Okay, Jovo, here's what I learned about my own balky 3047. I took the handles off and cleaned the 'axles' on all 3-axes using lighter fluid. I did not completely tear it down because I didn't want to risk bending/breaking the cover plates. What came out was dirty, but didn't seem much like oil or grease residue. When it dried I blew in a little bit of powdered graphite, put a tiny dab of silicone grease on the handle threads where they screw into the housing, and reassembled. The head moves freely and smoothly; it tightens up more easily with less wrestling with the handles.

 

[jovo]

Thanks, Brian and the rest of you. I took the thing apart today (removing cover plates wasn't needed) by taking out the hex head bolts on the side of the head, and found that there is a large bearing fitted snugly into its' body. There was no apparent dirt, but I poked around the sides of the bearing anyway (a la wclavey) with a jeweler's screwdriver just to see if there were any schmutz I could easily reach. I think I would have had to bang the bearing out of the casing with a block of wood to get at it more thoroughly, and that was more than I felt willing to attempt. In any case, I didn't disturb the original grease that was on the bearing. I then put it back together, and removed the hex head bolt that sits next to the vertical axis tightening lever and drizzled a minute amount of machine oil on that, reinserted it much more loosely and tested it. There was considerably less resistance than before, but I doubt the drop of machine oil did very much...it's more likely that backing off the hex head bolt made the difference.

Thanks again to all who offered some advice. (BTW, it's strange how few puggers seem to have problems with their p/t heads, which is a very good thing I think!!)