[Ricochet]

I've tried many things, but I keep coming back to the standard silicone lube. One of the issues you'll find is that it needs to be the correct viscosity. I've purchased many "appropriate" lubricants for metal on metal, and that won't eat plastic parts, but they are a fluid, so they don't work properly. Also greas or most oil products are too thick.

Here's the problem in a nutshell: the lubricant has to be safe for plastics and rubbers, adequate for metal on metal, not too thick and not too much like a fluid, and you have to be able to clean it out and reapply. Silicone based, mid viscosity oil is very good at this.

If you have quality gun you can keep it going for ten years without it needing fixes or anything. You may end up needing a seal here, or a piston piece there, but your metal parts should last you.

To save metal parts you can perform a cleaning. Grime, dirt and dust will eventually start wearing metal parts out. To clean it you can buy a silicone based fluid in a pressurized can. It's yellow and sold at Canadian Tire, I think it's made by Gunk or something. Anyways, I dissemble the gun into a few components, such as the frame, the slide, the barrel assembly and the recoil assembly. I thoroughly spray out each one, making certain to get into all of the mechanisms, moving parts, etc. then I sit them in a plastic or Tupperware container upright so they can drain. I let them drain for at least an hour. After that's done I check the fluid in the bottom of the container. If it's really dirty I re-spray the parts again and repeat. Once clean-ish fluid is leaking out of the gun I wipe up the parts with paper towels and q-tips thoroughly. You want to remove as much of the fluid as you reasonably can. The barrel and hop-up I gently wipe out with a q-tip or two, same as the piston and hammer mechanisms. After the gun has been cleaned and wiped let it dry a bit. I then apply a few drops of silicone oil into hammer mechanism, trigger mechanism and piston, which I then move and function to work it in. I use green gas to oil the slide and hop-up because it'll spray right out of the magazine and you don't want to drown them. After its all together, put a magazine through it. Excess oil will spray out of the gun. At this point, wipe it all down again, but you don't have to disassemble it. Wipe out the magwell as well.

And you're done.