Expiration Dates on Lubricants

[mcoulton]

Hello

I don't have any experience with the expiration dates on oils. My question is how long after the expiration date is the lubricant still effective or do I need to rush out and replace it right away? I have three oils that have expiration dates of: D - 5 = 10 / 2022, 941 & 9010 = 11 / 2022. 

From the Mobius web site I see that:

D - 5 is a "mixture of mineral and refined vegetable oils"

941 & 9010 are synthetic.

 

Thanks in advance for any help that can be given. 

 

[LittleWatchShop]

Search this forum for "expiration" and you will get some opinions. According to @nickelsilver (whom I trust), they do not matter at all.

Makes sense for synthetic oils.

[grsnovi]

1 hour ago, mcoulton said:

how long after the expiration date is the lubricant still effective

I don't know...

...however I would venture to guess that lubricating with "expired" oil would be effective but might not "last" as long as you might hope.

My question is: Are you charging for your services or is your watch repair limited to learning the trade on your own dime?

It would seem that if you are charging customers for watch servicing you ought to be able to replace your dated oil whereas if you are only worried about your own watches you ought to be able to determine that the "old" oil you've used is going to want to be cleaned and re-lubed on a more aggressive schedule.

[HectorLooi]

53 minutes ago, grsnovi said:

I don't know...

...however I would venture to guess that lubricating with "expired" oil would be effective but might not "last" as long as you might hope.

My question is: Are you charging for your services or is your watch repair limited to learning the trade on your own dime?

It would seem that if you are charging customers for watch servicing you ought to be able to replace your dated oil whereas if you are only worried about your own watches you ought to be able to determine that the "old" oil you've used is going to want to be cleaned and re-lubed on a more aggressive schedule.

I guess the manufacturing world has succeeded in messing with our minds. in our dental industry, things like liquid mercury and gold alloy have expiration dates. C'mon .... Really?

Mercury is an element and gold is stable. So how do they expire? Previously a batch number or lot number was sufficient. Manufacturers became greedy and started putting expiration dates on everything. Making consumers feel guilty or unsafe using expired products, resulting in perfectly good stuff getting thrown away.

I think some common sense is needed. Although they say honey found in an Egyptian pyramid is still good, I wouldn't want to try 3000 year old honey. But I would certainly use expired lubricants. (Ahem... not the personal type, of course. )

[grsnovi]

3 minutes ago, HectorLooi said:

I think some common sense is needed.

Agreed 1000%

I think it all started with food manufacturers. Granted certain food can certainly go bad but most dated products say: "Best by <some date>" 

If the oils were natural vegetable oils I suspect they could go rancid at some point but I believe Moebius has taken a page from food companies hoping that by putting a date on their 9010 we'll worry. What would be better would be something suggesting that "out of date" oils may not perform as long as "fresh" oils.

It's highly unlikely that: a) I'll ever use all 2ml (or 5ml) of what I have now of various oils or that b) I'll ever actually undertake servicing a watch for pay where I would in fact be slightly concerned.

[tomh207]

8 hours ago, HectorLooi said:

I guess the manufacturing world has succeeded in messing with our minds. in our dental industry, things like liquid mercury and gold alloy have expiration dates. C'mon .... Really?

Mercury is an element and gold is stable. So how do they expire? Previously a batch number or lot number was sufficient. Manufacturers became greedy and started putting expiration dates on everything. Making consumers feel guilty or unsafe using expired products, resulting in perfectly good stuff getting thrown away.

I think some common sense is needed. Although they say honey found in an Egyptian pyramid is still good, I wouldn't want to try 3000 year old honey. But I would certainly use expired lubricants. (Ahem... not the personal type, of course. )

Agreed, best example from the food industry I saw was for a stated 200,000 year old Himalayan salt with a 3 month expiration date

[Neverenoughwatches]

11 hours ago, mcoulton said:

Hello

I don't have any experience with the expiration dates on oils. My question is how long after the expiration date is the lubricant still effective or do I need to rush out and replace it right away? I have three oils that have expiration dates of: D - 5 = 10 / 2022, 941 & 9010 = 11 / 2022. 

From the Mobius web site I see that:

D - 5 is a "mixture of mineral and refined vegetable oils"

941 & 9010 are synthetic.

 

Thanks in advance for any help that can be given. 

 

I dont really understand how they can have an expiration date. They will experience more oxidation in the watch itself. So if you have an oil that runs out of its sell by date in a months time and you use it in a watch before it runs out, do you then have to clean and relube the watch a month after you've used that oil. How bloody ridiculous

9 hours ago, HectorLooi said:

hey say honey found in an Egyptian pyramid is still good, I wouldn't want to try 3000 year old honey.

Oh i definitely would, lots of 1000 year old vitamin and mineral goodies completely untouched by our environmental fook ups. Honey is the most stable food source on the planet.

Edited October 1, 2022 by Neverenoughwatches

[mcoulton]

Thank you all for your reply's. I'm only using the lubricants on personal watches; not doing any commercial work. I wondered about the expiration date because the logic seems flawed. If a watch is to be serviced every 5 years and the lubricant used is set to expire one month after the watch has been serviced then what does that mean for the newly serviced watch (as neverenoughwatch says). 

"200,000 year old Himalayan salt with a 3 month expiration date". Excellent!

[JohnR725]

7 hours ago, mcoulton said:

I'm only using the lubricants on personal watches;

I guess it depends upon how much money you have if you have lots of money added replace all of those plus a few more just because

I remember my first bottle 9010 it lasted a long time because it didn't have an expiring date. Because I've seen the advertisements they had where they said their oil lasted forever. Then I went to a lecture with a person giving the lecture explained how all the bottles have to be labeled and every certain number years they must be replaced or else maybe the world was going come to an end or something. Then because of that and $200 cash I ran down the local material house and I was missing two bottles of HP oil at the time that required another couple hundred dollars. So I formulated a new plan which is on personal watches which is what I was doing that the whale last forever with some minor exceptions

oh at the link below you want to download number 40+ anything else that looks interesting.

you notice an Omega has a procedure every six years new oils. But they are using the synthetic oils are not using anything with organic or natural oils. If you look at the tech sheets on the organic oils there's specifying it to your life.

Oh and then there's the other complication at 5.99 years according to Omega we would still be using that oil and would recommend the service interval of how many years? Approximately 5 perhaps so now we have a 11 year life of the bottle of oil

oh and they also specify how many days it's the sip the oil cup and I typically don't worry about that either.

My understanding of the reasons they put dates on the bottle were without a dates you have no idea how old it is. If it's one of the oils that are either organic or the mineral may break down with time you don't know if it's one year older 20 years old as the bottles tended to look the same the last number years. Then yes occasionally you will hear stories of some of the oils going bad I've never heard of a synthetic going bad but I once heard of someone that had a bad bottle a D5 and there were using it on clocks will they had entire month of clocks that had issues.

Really the biggest concerns of lubrication are keeping it clean. It is also a concern about how you get the oil out of the bottle and how much contamination you get in the bottle. Which is why companies like Rolex supply the lubrication and syringes.

as you're not a manufacturer with infinitely deep pockets where purchasing oil X number years as part of doing business to be honest I wouldn't worry about it. The way you can tell if lubrication is good or bad is really in the performance of the watch I don't think any of the oils we have are necessarily going to go bad in a bad way. You may look at literature of vintage oils based on porpoises are whales are other stuff when they went bad they could actually go acid and do damage to the metal supposedly that would be bad. Typically what are oils you is a they just spread away with time and no longer lubricate or it's possible to get sticky but I've only seen that with references to oil from India is a typically are oils don't seem to go bad the synthetics not but they couldn't but they just don't seem to.

 

 

 

 

 

 

https://www.cousinsuk.com/document/search?SearchString=working

 

[LittleWatchShop]

Elgin watch oil in the one-drop bottle. The best...and I have plenty!

[canthus]

Spent many years in the lube industry and oils degrade due to ;-

Air - oxygen in air will slowly oxidise elements of the oil - remedy is to keep airtight. Best done by storing upside down so lid is sealed by the oil.  Less free space the better.

Heat - this will evaporate any light ends and cause the oil to thicken.  Usually not a problem in watches c.f. engines.  Keep as cool as possible, some people keep in fridge, but not freezer.

Moisture - akin to air.  All oil and greases contain minute quantities of water which will abet oxidation. Water will often degrade additives.  Keep as dry as possible and avoid open containers in high humidity conditions.  Again store upside down to seal lid as the free space will 'breath' air in and out as temps/humidity vary

Light - this will slowly oxidise oil, so keep in the dark.

Storage medium - glass is best, avoid metals as these may consume some additives (that is their job!) and plastic may leach into oil in some cases.

Basically store upside down, in the dark in a cool dry environment with the lid firmly closed.

This is more important with natural oils/greases.  Some 'synthetic' oils are 'synthesised hydrocarbons (SHC)' and some are in fact not 'oils' but chemicals.

Shelf life is a debatable topic.  If oils/greases are stored in the best conditions as above they should last many years, more so with SHC types.  Similarly watches that are tightly sealed should  see less oil degradation, more so if they are assembled in clean, low humidity conditions.

Just my opinions from my experience.