We had a lengthy commentary on screws and drivers on the previous post, the next important subject to consider is lubrication. If you’ve read any of Nikon’s repair manuals you’ll see that Nikon uses different types of grease and lubricants on different parts of their lenses and cameras. While this is the best practice in camera manufacturing, it isn’t practical for DIY repair for a lot of reasons, some of which are:
- It is expensive to keep an inventory of various lubricants.
- It is not cost-effective if you are just fixing your own stuff.
- You may accidentally mix lubricants.
With the above considerations outlined, we will now start discussing about the most important lubricants in camera and lens repair.
Preparation:
Before applying fresh grease to your helicoids you’ll definitely need to clean the helicoids first and remove the old, dirty grease. This is also true for any camera and lens parts that once had lubricants applied to them.
Just take a look, looks like the grease has not been replaced since 1965! This has to be cleaned and never leave any residue.
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Richard Haw's Classic Nikon Repair and Review 