No machine oil to grease your screaming fans? ... use Olive Oil!!

T

The Red

[H]ard|Gawd
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Sep 13, 2006
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Hey, I have a coolit ram fan that I kept taking out because it was screaming, and my ram started spouting errors in bench that were not present there before I removed the cooling...so I knew I had to put the fan back in. I dreaded this, so I started looking for a solution. I didnt have machine grease or oil around, because I hadnt ridden my bike in 6 years, and had no other use for it... must have thrown it out..

Then it hit me... to try and use the oil I cook with, after seeing that computer being run in an entire vat of oil, used as coolant, I figured Olive Oil wasnt conductive either. Looked it up, and sure enough.

I poured some oil right into the assembly... let it run off, moved it around so the oil would run out of different ends... put the cooler w/ the noisy fan back onto the ram... and voila ... SILENT ... now going on 3 weeks of silent.

The only downside?... after 5-6 consecutive hours of Age of Conan, it starts to smell slightly like Italian cooking.. making me hungry.

(PS: A shout-out to my new friends at MTBR, where I'll be linking this... except one.. you know who you are!)
 
Keep us updated on the longevity of the solution as well, if you could. Does it stay effective after a day? Five days?...
 
I too have a noisy fan in my case. I may have to try this. How long do you run your machine for at a time?
 
its almost the end of week 4 after my lube job... soon it'll be a month.. no noise yet

I haven't seen any gumming or anything so far, there seems to be no run-off or anything... what should I be looking for? or should I wait to hear any noise?
 
ok, I just removed my screechy Thermaltake Typhoon.. cleaned off the ton of dust... lubed it up with some extra-virgin... and its running like a whisper right now. This has me thinking about my case fans.. they arent that loud... but I'm debating going for it, to see if theres any improvement at all.

It dawned on me that I should have documented this and made a how-to out of it. Video and all.
 
What does it take for Olive Oil to go rancid? The bottles, none of them in the store, have expiration dates. And I thought it was used as a preservative and transported around the world in jars, centuries ago, for months and months on end, on sailing ships, which meant high moisture and no sanitation...

Ok, I did some digging... there was a more thorough yahoo.answers answer to this question right here it gives sources and all, I read through.

The summation is, oil lasts longer depending on purity... so extra virgin was a good idea. The normal shelf-life of closed Olive Oil is 4-5 years... of Opened Olive Oil is 15 months.

I'm ok with a lube lasting 15 months. Thats a lot better than my car.

Its also saying that it affects the taste of the oil and the anti-oxidant content, it says nothing about affects on its viscosity.

Sources:
http://www.oliveoilsource.com/olive_oil_storage.htm
 
It works but if it was ideal we could be seeing olive oil in the lubricants section of the hardware store. It is a bad idea to use this in normal situations but it is your stuff and do what you want. However please do not encourage others to try this. Any lubricant in an emergency is better than none however I strongly doubt you will find any fan manufacturer that recommends Olive Oil as a lubricant for their product.
 
BillParrish said:
It works but if it was ideal we could be seeing olive oil in the lubricants section of the hardware store. It is a bad idea to use this in normal situations but it is your stuff and do what you want. However please do not encourage others to try this. Any lubricant in an emergency is better than none however I strongly doubt you will find any fan manufacturer that recommends Olive Oil as a lubricant for their product.
Click to expand...

This.
I can't think of ANY time where I would be in such an emergency that I couldn't just turn my computer off and go purchase some real lube from the store.
 
Might sound stupid but I have never thought of oiling case fans. Would this reduce the volume of an already pretty quiet fan?
 
+1 Bill is right on in what he is saying.


Cooking oil does gum up and if you are not careful to clean and re-lube often it will be the same as if you used silicon glue on them and you will have to replace them. If anybody has ever worked in a restaurant kitchen they know what I am talking about.
 
DO NOT USE ANY COOKING OILS! As others have said,,, they will gum up break down and fubar your fans. They have a higher and worse flow point. They will gum your bearings up no matter what kind they are. And will induce more wear.

If you have to lube a fan and are dirt ass broke and don't have food to eat. Use the tip of a dip stick from the nearest car! If I need fine lubes I use either Mobil 1 0w-20 or Motorcraft 5w-20 or straight ester or pharm grade mineral oil. Most can be got at the local Wal-Mart or Walgreens.

And don't tell me about starving kids at college. I have three girls that went to school and degree'ed out. They carried full loads and worked full time. Dad just kept there cars running. Welcome to adulthood. :)
 
morkboy_wonder said:
Might sound stupid but I have never thought of oiling case fans. Would this reduce the volume of an already pretty quiet fan?
Click to expand...

Fan's bearings are lubed at manufacture it is just that after a time the lube breaks down or gets dirty since fans are not sealed so dust can get into then some just last better due to bearing design or sealing.

replacing the lube can quiet a fan but it depends on the original lube used. Quite a few people change the lube on their rollerblade's bearings with lighter oil for a smoother roll but oiling a fan that is alread quiet probably wont make it less noisy unless the original stuff used wa too "thick".

Oh and Fruit/Vegetable oils go rancid fro exposure to airborne contaminaints,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooking_oil

It has to do with the fact that the molecule has "open" spaces depending on if it is monosaturated,polysatureted, or Hydrogenated. the open spaces readly absort sulfur compounds and other chemicals.

EVOO is good for about 9 months once opened but that is not calculated in a fan bearing on a pc.

In a pinch Baby oil which is mineral oil http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mineral_oil with fragrence added is better but machine oil is lighter and better for most fan bearings.

Silicone spray is ok also but is messy to apply sometimes
 
In the middle of week 5. The posters above got me paranoid about the effects. I'm listening for noise, and watching for any smells, or slowing. So far things are ok on my end, working good.

fyi, my comp is on all the time, so the fans I lubed dont actually stop spinning unless something goes wrong.

Still no word from anyone on the effects of rancidity on the lubrication factors... so if it starts rancidity in 9 or 15 months, it'll taste bad?

Are there differentiation factors involved as well? I know Crisco, Canola & Sunflower oil is used in most kitchens because its a lot cheaper, but breaks down a whole heap-lot faster than Olive Oil... so when you guys are saying you've seen Oil gum-up in a kitchen, what type of oil was it? and what circumstances?

I need to find somewhere the info as to the breakdown of EVOO lubrication factors. All I can tell so far is that its lubrication function is working, and perhaps you dont find it in the machine oil section because food oil costs a lot more.

EDIT:

Ok, I did some searching, and apparently I cant claim to have come up with the idea, there is a long history of using this stuff on this forum... like this thread from 2004 with many users reporting using EVOO.
 
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