Noob lathe selection question

[Deude-Mann]

A couple of years ago I found a great deal at an auction for a large machine shop in Houston that was closing down. I bought a Victor 16x40 lathe and an Alliant Mill (Bridgeport copy with a DRO and X-Y servos) both in operating condition, with I'm guessing ~150 lbs of tooling (boxes of it), and a nice workbench for $6500. I added another $1500 for the rotary phase converter to run them. So far all I have had to do is clean them up and replace the drive belts on the lathe.

All of the tooling they came with was a big bonus, easily $1-2K worth if I bought it all new. A bottle of Evaporust, and some cleaning, and most all of the tooling is usable.

 

[daryl bane]

If it doesn't have issues, you'll really like that Victor. I used one that was identical for 20 yrs. making very finicky stuff. It never disappointed me.

 

[GADJEEP]

A couple of years ago I found a great deal at an auction for a large machine shop in Houston that was closing down. I bought a Victor 16x40 lathe and an Alliant Mill (Bridgeport copy with a DRO and X-Y servos) both in operating condition, with I'm guessing ~150 lbs of tooling (boxes of it), and a nice workbench for $6500. I added another $1500 for the rotary phase converter to run them. So far all I have had to do is clean them up and replace the drive belts on the lathe.

All of the tooling they came with was a big bonus, easily $1-2K worth if I bought it all new. A bottle of Evaporust, and some cleaning, and most all of the tooling is usable.

Thats a great find!

I recently bought a 1977 1630 as my first "real" lathe and I love it. It was grimy as all hell when I got it but I've been slowly going through it and it's fairly humming now.

Question: what do you know about the cone clutch in the apron? It doesn't say anything more than how to adjust it in the manual and I'd like to know if it can be used with a hard stop or no.