I quit using contact cleaner on old lens mounts and it saved me a $60 repair
Everyone on the forums says hit a stiff focusing ring with contact cleaner first, but on a 1982 Nikon mount I tried that and it ate the grease seal, so now I pull the mount and re-lube by hand instead. Took an extra 40 minutes but the lens still focuses smooth a year later. Does anyone else here skip the spray and just pull it apart?
Man, I don't know about all that. People have been spraying contact cleaner on stiff helicals for decades and I've never once seen it eat a grease seal, so maybe that Nikon was already dried out and cracking before you ever touched it. A $60 repair also sounds like somebody charging you shop rates for a five minute job, which is a whole separate scam. Not saying pulling the mount is wrong, but 40 extra minutes on every lens sounds like a lot of work to fix a problem that might not even exist.