Stan,
After reading all the trouble that it takes to remove the oil pump with the spindle in place, I believe I'd go for spindle removal 1st and then the oil pump.
It took about 1.5 hours to remove the spindle today. I didn't put a mark anywhere on my poor machine inside or out.
I purchased two spanner wrenches from McMaster Carr for the spindle nuts. They only cost about 12.oo each. No other special tools were needed. All the fasteners were easy to get to.
The manual I purchased from Monarch was somewhat helpful, as well as the tech. The problem is that the machines have small differences from one year to the next that may not be in the manual or the tech may not tell about.
As such in my case. As luck would have it, mine is a little different. Not really a big deal, just had to figure out one or two things on the fly.
A guy has to have the right mind set. I wasn't going to let this thing get the best of me, I already had my mind made up that I was going to win the battle. It's just a shaft with a few gears on it, just how hard can it be?
I slipped the gears back in place after the spindle was removed so I wouldn't have any loose parts rolling around. See attached photo. The gears are impressive. The front bearing looked like the day it was installed!
I was really surprised on the amount of trash that was in the headstock. There is no way a guy can clean the bottom of the gear box out with the spindle in place. The couple of low spots were filled with chips and fine pieces of metal. All the big pieces looked like chips from work and not from any gears / parts from inside of the headstock.
I took a siphon sprayer and 5 gals of mineral spirits and washed out the sump. I put a couple of magnets in the low spots to help pick up the big pieces of trash and used a manual suction pump to get the dirty mineral spirits out. I'd spray a little, clean magnets, and suck out the dirty oil. Then, do it again. That's what took all the time. Again, way more trash than expected.
It only took two minutes to remove the oil pump with the spindle out. The screen looked stopped up.
The reverse feed gear dog is worn bad. The clutch is in a little better condition than the gear. I'm going to regrind the gear without any welding to get things back in working condition. With only one point of contact and no indexing to worry about, I'm not going to weld, Just grind.
I'll put together a progressive set of photos the next day or so and a few notes so the next guy won't be intimidated as I was.
Thanks, Aj
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