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K&T #3 Leaking Oil??

USNmechanic

Aluminum
Joined
Dec 1, 2016
Has anyone had oil leaking from this hole before? The hole is in the bottom of the feed and rapid traverse bracket. I just had the vertical head feed shaft off while troubleshooting the head. I used the mill for about 30 minutes yesterday with no signs of leaking. I went to run the mill this morning, and heard the stream of oil dripping down to the base of the machine. I'm wondering if it's a tell tale drain and I blew an oil seal. Or maybe it was a port for an oil wick and should have a plug that blew out? Any advice would be greatly appreciated before I start to tear apart the rapid traverse assembly. Thanks!

IMG_3733.jpg

Sorry about the bad picture quality. I have poor lighting in my shop right now, and the camera lens was a little hazy and I didn't realize it until I went to upload it.
 
What is oil level showing on other side? I have heard of knees so full of coolant that the oil is way too high and finds places to escape.
 
If anything, the oil level in the knee is too low. The gauge glasses are in pretty bad shape, but I haven't had the funds to replace them yet. I'll probably order some more oil before I run the mill again to ensure that with the leak I'm not losing it too fast and causing any damage. I wonder if the oil that's leaking is coming down from the vertical head through the feed shaft tube.
 
You probably don't need to replace them. Just remove and clean. Have you been using water based coolant and perhaps had some leak into the knee. It happens and is the greatest cause of sludge in there as well as over filling the oil.

 
Thanks WHHJR. The gauge glasses are actually warped and the outer lens is broken in many cases. I've removed several of them already to clean them, but they really need to be replaced at some point. I've read in another thread that the plastic shield used on welding glasses is a good alternative, or McMaster sells glass lenses as well. It's just another one of those things I need to set aside some money for and haven't yet.

I'm thinking about just draining the oil out of all of the reservoirs and doing a kerosene flush like the manual recommends. It will probably be several months before I can afford to order the oil, so I may just run it for the five minutes and then let it do an extended soak in the kerosene until I can purchase the oil. The oil running out of that hole appears to have a small quantity of little metal flecks in it, and I'm hoping that it's normal since I'm sure the oil hasn't be changed in a really long time, and not indicative of some rapid wear occurring right now. There aren't any unexpected noises coming from the machine, and everything appears to be working correctly.
 
My 2K was purchased from the estate of a man who had died some 15 years prior to them finally getting around to liquidating his machine shop. It had sat unused for at least that long. When I ran it, after verifying that there was, indeed, lubricant in the machine, and the pumps were working, it started leaking oil at several locations.

I chalked it up to dry and broken seals, and used Loctite high temp gasket maker. I can get you the number if you'd like (I'm not in the shop right now)....it's the red stuff, and it works extremely well.

Just giving my opinion here, but if I were you, I wouldn't run that mill without changing the oil. Not knowing how long it's been in there, or whether or not it's loaded with "crap and chips", you could do some permanent damage to the knee or gear train. I've been inside mine, and I can honestly tell you that I never want to have to open it up to try to fix something. Seriously HUGE job. 7 1/2 gallons of mobil dte heavy medium is a small price to pay for making sure you have a clean slate (along with a good kerosene flush.) Just my .02 on these old, great mills.

The glass lenses are not expensive, and are available online.
 
Hawkfan9, that’s good advice I wish I would have followed before. During this investigation I’ve found out that I’ve been running the knee low on oil due to a fouled sight glass. Hopefully there’s no permanent damage as they’ve all shown flow up until now, and everything seemed to be running fine. Definitely a good learning experience that I hope isn’t too costly.

I think I may have found the reason for the oil leaking out and I’m going to try to fix it tonight. I believe there’s an oil port on the vertical head hand wheel assembly casting that I didn’t seal around when I reinstalled it the first time. I took the assembly off last night and scraped everything again, but didn’t have enough Loctite 515 to seal it. I’ll pick some up today on my way home and get everything buttoned up again. I’ve also ordered new lenses for the oil sight gauges and will install those tonight if they came in. Either way I’ll be draining the oil and doing a kerosene flush before refilling with fresh oil. I’ve seen Nuto 68 recommended and the mobile DTE you referenced as well. I may pick up some ISO 46 from my local Tractor Supply to run that for a while first and then swap to the better stuff. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with the kerosene once the flush is done though.


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I had some time this weekend to work on the mill. I put the hand wheel assembly back on, making sure this time to seal around the oiler port I had missed before. I also replaced all of the oil gauge glasses with 50mm welding google replacement lenses as I saw recommended in another thread. I then drained all the oil, filled her up with kerosene to do a flush, and no leaks! Unfortunately, there's no flow showing in the knee. I don't think the flow port in the oil gauge is clogged since I saw flow from it when I was filling the knee with kerosene. I read some other posts where the same issue is discussed, which led me to trying to pull the oil pump to inspect it. I wasn't able to get the pump cover plate off though, and was wondering if anyone knows how it's designed to disassemble. I took out the 8 screws from the cover, and it seemed to pivot easily around the shaft that the idler gear is mounted on. There isn't much room to get at it, but I did try to use two screwdrivers to pry on opposite sides to no avail. Here's a picture of the pump that my machine has:
IMG_3803.jpg

I did put the screws back in an run the machine for a minute to see if I could determine if it was actually pumping. If I touched a screw driver to the cover while touching the other end to my ear, it sounded like it was working. I don't have a good reference since I've never listened to it while I knew that it was working, but this was a trick we used to use in the Navy pretty frequently and it seemed to me like there was fluid moving through the pump. There's a hole behind the pump casting that looks like it should be pumping oil to the gears inside of it, and there was nothing coming from it. In the I the case that I'm wrong, which it looks like I am, I wonder if the pump lost it's prime or the kerosene is too thin for it to pump properly due to wear. If I can't pull the pump, I may try to hook up some tubing to the pump pickup tube and draw some kerosene from a bucket as recommended in another thread. Has anyone had any success trying that, or are there any other recommendations? Thanks for the help and advice!
 
If anything, the oil level in the knee is too low. The gauge glasses are in pretty bad shape, but I haven't had the funds to replace them yet. I'll probably order some more oil before I run the mill again to ensure that with the leak I'm not losing it too fast and causing any damage. I wonder if the oil that's leaking is coming down from the vertical head through the feed shaft tube.
I'v repaired more than a few of these. Get your hands on a face shield and a circular punch or a pair of shears and cut the OD of your site glass. Drill out the holes for the screws. Punch or cut a new "lens" out of the face shield material, make two new gaskets one for each side of the new lens. Put a light film of silicon gasket sealer on the gasket surfaces and viola all done.
 
Thanks! I actually already replaced them today, but I will have to take your advice regarding the gasket sealer since the knee glass has a small drip of kerosene coming from it right now. I'll do that when I drain it before filling with oil. I used 50mm welding goggle replacement shields that were recommended in another thread. Here's a picture of the new with the old:
IMG_3799.jpgIMG_3801.jpg
 
I was able to test the pump tonight by connecting a hose to the pick up tube in the knee and attaching a funnel to the other end. This was filled with kerosene and I let it sit for about a minute to make sure it wasn't leaking around the connections. I then started the mill, and watched level in the funnel go down while kerosene started pouring out the drain hole. This leads me to believe that the pump is working correctly, but for some reason the fluid isn't making it through all of the lubrication system. I then put the drain plug back in and filled the knee back up with fresh kerosene. I ran it again, this time looking inside the knee from the hole where I have the casting removed to access the pump. I didn't see any indication of running lubricant. Nothing was dripping down, and the sump was relatively calm. I think at this point I'm going to drain all the kerosene and fill it up with oil to see what it does. I'm wondering if the kerosene is too thin to pump properly and make it through the entire system before draining out. Worst case is that there still isn't flow and I need to drain the knee again to investigate, but I don't want to keep running it on kerosene. I'm starting to second guess my plan on running ISO 46 since I feel that thicker oil like the manual recommends will pump better, but I live in Michigan and my shop isn't currently heated, so I wonder if it would be better to run the ISO 46 until next summer. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!
 








 
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