how to oil a long fan without disassembling the heatsink?

[irus]

alright i have a t42 longfan which is making whirring sounds, so im going to put some engine oil in it. however im not going to disassemble the heat sink itself as i dont have any drill machines around.

so how does one get the oil in the right place exactly and how much of it?

thanks

[Navck]

HALT! Do not use engine oil, that is designed to lubricate surfaces that withstand several thousand pounds per square inch under very high temperatures all while having various detergents and anti wear additives!

You WILL have to remove the heatsink from the system (Pop the bezel) to see if you can access the fan bearings:
http://www.dansdata.com/fanmaint.htm

Find yourself some bearing oil (*Grease not recommended for this) or machine oil (Kinda ehhh in quality.) Do not use WD40 as a lubricant, it is a solvent for you to flush lubricant from things.

You may or may not need a tiny utility knife to make a hole if your fan does not let you access it.

Also if your fan is making noises, it is nearing end of life.

[irus]

hi thanks for the quick reply, so ill use machine oil instead!

alright ive removed the sticker from underneath the heatsink and i can see circular metal cover sitting flush with the bottom of the heatsink as shown in that link.

however its not coming off, before i try something fancy/more force to pull it off thought ill confirm if it is supposed to come off at all?


thanks

[irus]

ok its done! used machine oil. the circular metallic part is irremovable. the idea is to the hold the heatsink upside down and push the fan blades down/out creating some gap between the pcb(green chip board) and the fan blades. through this tiny gap pour in machine oil and spin it manually a couple of times. wipe off excess oil. this quietened the fan completely.

reapplying AS5 also makes a difference.

and finally i took some nylon straps lying around and super glued them on heat sink above the gpu/cpu area so now when keyboard is reassembled it creates more pressure on the heatsink to stay put and provide better contact.

the temperatures is like new. ambient temp 35 C and cpu 48 C gpu 53 C with light browsing and with youtube on for 5 minutes it is 68 C cpu and 66 C gpu.

no more temperature spikes and no more noise. i hope this lasts for a while, maybe a few months.

mission successful

[irus]

coupling this with nhc has been incredible. youtube hd videos are playing at cpu/gpu 58C/60C with no fan on (smart mode in tpfc 0.62)!

undervolting at 0.764 v (6x) - 1.052 v (18x) and ati 9600 running at 200mhz/180mhz

totally silent machine now

i guess lesser the heat longer the laptop life too!

i wonder howmuch cooler it might run if i shift from windows 7 to windows xp!

[EchoFox]

Hi, having just bought a new long fan assembly for my T43p to quell the noisiness of the original, the peace and quiet lasted for all of the 20 seconds I had the thing on to test it, I put all the screws back in only to find it making that whirring noise again.

Since I now have not one but two loud fan assemblies, I'm going to try oiling one and see how it goes.

I see what you mean about pushing down the fan a tiny bit - do you just spray in that gap that is created between the fan/blades and the PCB? Isn't there a risk of messing up that PCB under the sticker? To you have to avoid that, or does it not matter?

Furthermore, I'm going to see if I've got some machine oil lying around. I definitely have some Abbey Silicone Oil 35 (made for airsoft guns) - will that work?

Also, this thread is highly relevant to our interests:

http://www.overclockers.com/forums/show ... p?t=437021

UPDATE:

I just went ahead and used the Silicone I had, on the original fan (I figured I had the spare - one all the way from China - so no need to worry if I messed anything up) and it's running with pretty much no whirr at all, teeny bit on startup; I think that's just because it goes to like full power then. TPFC tells me all is well, with temps under 50 for writing this message and having several other tabs open.

I think if I applied the oil more gratuitously, I could eliminate all traces of the noise entirely, but the way it is right now is perfectly acceptable. As shown on that thread I linked to, I removed the fan from the heatsink assembly and took off the blades to apply the oil.

MINUTES LATER:

Yeah whirring's back. Looks like I need to use way more oil.

[RealBlackStuff]

Try Castrol , for that REALLY fast whiff
http://www.castrol.com/castrol/generica ... Id=6003486

[irus]

yup i had it dripping in machine oil, pcb isnt hurt by the oil, later wiped the exterior with a paper tissue. its working fine till now. no noise and nice temp control under 50. in an air conditioned room (25 C ambient) it drops to 38C

regarding the link well if proper oiling is possible without opening the shell then no point opening the shell.

[EchoFox]

That's true. Having a spare assembly lying around, I thought I'd try it anyway. Later I'll try putting some Castrol in it, if that'll be more effective than Silicone. Thing is, the fan is upside down in our ThinkPads, so surely most lubricant will just free itself eventually via gravity?

[RealBlackStuff]

If you mix in some graphite powder, it should stay in place for a looooong time.

[irus]

i suspect gravity will work favorably to keep the oil in place but normal wear will make the oil run out. but its not that fast too. by the time it starts becoming noisy, the fan would be pretty dusty and need cleaning anyway. it should last a few months though 6-7 months maybe. give it a nice soap water bath (i do it without removing the pcb or opening the shell, do it at your own risk) sun/blow dry it and oil again.. good to go for another 6~7 months.

i've not tried graphite powder but yea that should help specially if you open the shell.

[EchoFox]

Well, the other day I removed the fan blades from the fan unit and absolutely raped the inside of the mechanism with silicone oil and it has had a marginal effect. Whirring is still present.

I guess I'll try some castrol motor oil then?

[irus]

thats a detergent based oil... same as castrol.. id recommend a real oil without additives... machine oil should do.

[Navck]

Silicone oil is too thin, go with some machine oil like the stuff for sewing machines.

By the way, how'd you pop the fan out?

[EchoFox]

Literally just by getting a screwdriver and applying force, as shown here. It then pops rather nicely back into place (it won't be perfect but it will stay in place).

[Navck]

...That doesn't look particularly like a good idea depending on how the fan assembly and fan blade(s)-unit is mounted...

[irus]

opening the shell is neither required nor recommended...

[EchoFox]

That's true. One of my motivations for removing it was just to see if it could be done, since if I ever need a replacement, the cost of a fan is very small compared to that of a whole heatsink unit. Furthermore, I have a spare lying around so if I did mess it up it's not the end of the world.

What we can take away from it is that, if need be, you can remove the fan from the heatsink and replace it without causing any real damage to either components.

[Microspeed]

RBS, you bring up a good point and it got me thinking. I have not been plagued by the fan noise problem yet, so I cannot say that I have tried it on a ThinkPad cooling fan, but....
In my day job I have used a homebrewed mixture for years on oillite bearings. (basically what is in most fractional fan motors) I was shown the mixture by a colleague when I was an apprentice. I have found that it works very well. The ingredients are simple, 12 parts oil to one part Anti-seize. You need to shake the mixture before use. You can play with formula to suit your needs for a thicker or thinner solution. The brands I have always used are at the links below.

http://www.zoomspoutoiler.com/

http://www.permatex.com/products/Automo ... cant_a.htm

An exsample of Oil-lite bearings incase you have never heard the term.
http://www.ebnservices.com/category.aspx?categoryID=33

[EchoFox]

Found some this knocking around in the garage; think it'll do it?

[irus]

no additives please

[Microspeed]

no additives please

I would agree with the use non-detergent oil. A detergent additive could even make a bushing type bearing worse. However, to say no additives?
I cannot agree with that statement, would you care to elaborate sir?

[irus]

hi microspeed the link shows it is a motor oil so its logical to assume it would be an additive which is some kind of detergent! im sure it wont be vitamin A or D or some other vitamin as an additive, but if it is maybe it can make the fan stronger

[EchoFox]

So: I shouldn't use that.

Is there any oil brand/product that would go approved by everyone here for this purpose?

[Microspeed]

http://www.zoomspoutoiler.com/

This is what I would use

[AdaSch]

if you have noise try my solution

few year with 100% succes

cheers