On 7/16/2014 1:57 PM, Bob Engelhardt wrote:
...
I'm inclined to try gear oil, but I thought I'd collect RCM thoughts on
it first.

Thanks for all the suggestions.

Not having way lube, I tried bar & chain. It leaked through also. I
had forgotten Terry's suggestion of a mix of grease & oil.

On 7/16/2014 2:36 PM, Lloyd E. Sponenburgh wrote:
I'd more naturally assume that _either_ they were made of oilite to
begin with, and the grooves were just for maintenance oiling, where
the oil is expected to run out after having created a film, OR that
they were intended to be greased.

They're definitely not oilite. They have oil cups, not grease fittings.
And the oil grooves are about .04 x .1 and in a criss-cross pattern.
I.e., an oil supply network.

When such a sleeve is intended to be oiled instead of greased, there's
usually a felt washer on the ends or a wick in the oil hole to soak up
and re-feed oil into the gap as necessary.

There were wads of cotton near the top. But there are 4 oil feed holes
and a large (1 oz+-) reservoir all around. The cotton doesn't make
sense to me.

Replacing them is what I would do now. When I started, I thought that
it was a matter of cleaning them & refilling the oil, and I would have
the satisfaction of fixing them. When that didn't work, I got caught up
in the sunk cost fallacy and didn't want to throw away all the work that
I had done chipping out the carbonized oil.

In the end, I greased them and hope that it works.

Bob