If you *really* want to know . . . .
The lubricating in "needs lubricating" is a gerund, a verb in the same form as the present participle being used as a noun. An equivalent phrase would be "needs oil." In other words, a transitive verb + a noun acting as direct object.
The "needs lubricated" usage could be a case of eliding the "to be" = eliminating other helping verbs (e.g. "I seen") though this case is an infinitive rather than a finite helping verb being eliminated. But I have another theory.
Since a gerund looks just like a present participle, it is subject to substitution in some American English dialects that blur the distinction between the present and past participles, using the one for the other. These idioms are informal--colloquial or even slang--but common in those dialects. I don't have a study to support my supposition, but this parsing seems to me to be the more likely possibility.
