Too late now. The OP chose to take the advice of kibitzers who had "better advice" than the factory. Now he's going to more kibitzers to remedy the situation.

Who's to know if his problem is related to what he did before, or something else, but now he has little choice but to move forward. IMO- he should open, clean, inspect and relube according to factory guidelines (oil) and use that as a baseline to see if there might be other issues.