Oil soak machine manual

My Myford grinder is an early series machine 1960 or so. Current manuals floating around are never correct for this machine.
The DC power supply failed and smoked two motors. So thinking it was time to upgrade to a newer system, I began chasing the wiring for the DC power, and disconnect it all. Not easy with incorrect wiring chart ect.

So now its cleanup time, dig out wiring cutoffs and all. Buried in the bottom in the rear of the machine I find a piece of cardboard. When I take it out its a large manila envelope, Open it up, Yup, the original wiring diagram for the grinder, and details of the overloads ect.

It is soaked with almost 60 years of way oil which dripped onto the bottom of the cabinet.
Started with paper towels between pages for a few days at a time, then baking powder added to the paper towels. Now its dry, but the color of dark tea. There are some pages of no value so I am testing various things to get the paper back to a lighter color, so it can be copied.

Things already tried:
Brake clean, Electronic cleaner, Mineral spirits, Baking soda made into a paste. Murphys Oil soap, Soft soap.

Nothing was changed it greatly, everything does a bit, but not much.

Ideas Welcome.
Tom

Take pictures of what you can, as soon as you can. The paper will only get worse over time. How do I know?
My manual got soaked in hydraulic oil. Best of luck!

I would be inclined to put the baking soda on dry and let it sit for a week. I also wonder if fine crushed floor dry/kitty litter dust or powdered clay would soak it up? Much like oil stains in concrete it isn't all going to come out the first time. Whatever soaks it up will need repeating several times. I'm nervous that anything that makes it just flow out may also break down the paper/ink although that is speculation on my part.

Powdered white chalk and let sit. Then the idea of scanning/photographing would be good. Someone with good Photoshop skills can accomplish a lot by working on the digitized images of the pages.

being that old it's still printed with real ink not like
a modern laser printer so you have to be careful not to use a solvent that will
carry the ink away

Some of those I have come across (schematics larger than letter size)
are blueprints, the yellow paper & ammonia kind of copies.

Do you have access to a high end camera? (Think full frame DSLR class?) And strong photo editing software? (Or do you know someone who does?)

A thing I would try is to photograph each page, then load the picture into say photoshop, and adjust the curves (contrast, etc) to maximize readability of the key information.

You don't have to feed the fragile and precious document through a scanner, and might get readable enough diagrams, etc.

The dark brown may be oil dyes. Who knows. the problem is to get a usable image of what you have. Oil dyes and printer's ink may merge to illegibility in visible light but they may respond differently to other spectra. Have you tried IR? Ultra violet. Pass or notch filters?

CCD's are very sensitive to IR. Many digital cameras have IR blocking filters in their optics and in some cameras this filter may be removed with only a little tinkering. In total darkness, illuminate the document with a radiant heater, filtered IR lamp, IR LED array UV LED array, sun lamp, whatever, and see what happens.

A good documents expert might be able to help you. Got a museum or a university handy? A white collar crime lawyer might have an expert in his Rolodex.

If you're going to change out motors etc might not you make changes the the electrical system?