Dielectric or Conductive grease?

[Foghat73]

I'm fixing to clean and inspect all my electrical wiring contacts, or as many as I can find, and was wondering which should I use?

 

[PAUL161]

Dielectric! It's made just for electrical connections. It's not that expensive and one container will last forever.

 

[dklawson]

As stated above, use dielectric grease.

If you use conductive grease on bulbs... you'll short out the center contact to the lamp base. If you use conductive grease on the bullet connectors, there's always the possibility that it will ooze out and short to ground.

 

[ccougill]

and use very little, if you can see it it's too much

 

[Foghat73]

Thanks, picked up a few items on VB and added that to the list.

 

[DrEntropy]

Doug beat me to it. Save the "CopperShield" et al for battery terminals.

 

[David_DuBois]

Doug beat me to it. Save the "CopperShield" et al for battery terminals.

And ground connections.
Cheers,

 

[billspohn]

You can buy this stuff anywhere - they use it to thermally connect modern ignition modules to the distributor bodies. Without it, the modules burn out pretty swiftly - I suspect that some unprincipalled garages omit it through intention rather than ignorance so they can sell you a new module every 6 months.

It doesn't really matter how much you use (in bulb sockets) as long as it enought to exclude water - but there is no point in wasting it or having it smeared all over the place.

 

[jlaird]

Can get small tubes of it at your friendly car mart part place.

 

[Jarhead]

I never put anything back together without a little dielectric grease on the connections and when you need to take them apart it is sooo goood!

 

[DrEntropy]

Amen, brother! /bcforum/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/iagree.gif

Nothin' worse than having a corroded bulb break away in your hand on YOUR OWN car!

 

[Foghat73]

Actually I've done that Dr., thanks for the reminder.

 

[DrEntropy]

Peroxide and a good dressing. /bcforum/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/smirk.gif

 

[Mac_Townsend]

Plain Old Vaseline is used by many. I guess the notion is that the metal contacting metal still handles the conduction of electrons, but the goop prevents moisture from interfering with it.

that said, I paid a fist full ($40 or so) for a large tube of dielectric grease. I use it in spark plug boots, dist cap boots, etc.