Mystic, That was me you were refering when you talked about the guy recommending corrosion x. I still highly recommend corrosion x as a gun lube. Just a buy a bottle the next time you get the chance and try it out already. I am sure you will find a use for it! To answer your last question directly, I have never tried hoppes elite and I too have heard it is the same as MPro 7.
Anyways, I still recommend corrosion x, break free CLP and Ballistol. There are plenty of other good gun oils out there, those are just the 3 I really like. Birchwood casey gun oil was bumped out of the top list for me because it is a very poor rust preventer and is becoming harder to find in my area. I also feel Dupont multi-use teflon lubricant fills the same niche and is more versaltile.
Mystic, It sounds like your train of thought is headed in the right direction. It does not make a big difference as to what gun oil you are using! The main function of gun lube is to put some sort of barrier between the parts that interact with each other while the gun is functioning. You don't want the mating surfaces bone dry while they are rubbing together. Something, anything, slippery to make the parts interact more smoothly with less friction, heat and wear will be better than nothing. This concept is no different with any type of lubricant, be it gun oil, motor oil, personal lubricant, eye drops, ect. They all wet down the mating surfaces and make them operate more smoothly. None of the examples I mentioned above would work very well if they were bone dry, would they? To get our brains out of the gutter, Let's take eye drops for example. Most of us have had dry, irritated eyes at some point in our lives. The mating surfaces are your eye socket, eye ball and eye lids. They all touch each other and have move smoothly across each other in order for you to look around, blink and hold your eyes open longer than just a second. If your eyes get very dry for whatever reason, your eye lids may stick when you blink, it may be painful to hold your eyes open. Moving your eyeballs back and forth maybe uncomfortable and it may even feel like you have sand in your eyes. You put in 2-3 eye drops per eye and all of the above symptoms go away, almost immediately. Now, when your eyes are as dry as above, does it really matter what brand eye drops you used? Does it really matter if the eye drops are the thick heavy kind or the thin, watery artifical tear kind? Does it really matter what the eye drops smell like or the package they come in looks like? The answer is NO. Any type of eye drop will at least help some when your eyes are severly dry. You might really prefer one type over the other but they all do the basic task of making your eyes wet again and they all "work". Gun oils are the same basic logic as eye drops, they all pretty much "work". Long tangent will now end, sorry.... lol
The secondary purposes of a gun oil are to prevent rust, float away particulate, clean exsisting contamintion and prevent contanimation from adhereing to the surfaces. Again most gun oils all do this to some degree, although some are certainly better than others, especially when it comes to preventing rust nd cleaning the exsisting contamination.
My advice is to stick to a regular oil based lubricant (conventional or synthetic base doesn't really matter) that you can afford, is well tested, proven to prevent at least some rust, does not evaporate very quickly and wont gum up over time. I know from personal experience that corrosion x, breakfree clp, ballistol, super lube, tri-flow, fluid film, motor oil, ATF and others out there all meet those requirements.
Just pick what you think is a good value and meets your needs. Do not get into what I call the "Great lube debate". There are just too many good choices out there to ever bother getting involved.
