Hendey geared head lathe - noisy and leaking - remedies?

The jewel in my shop is an 18 speed 14x42 1937 Hendey. It performs well and is accurate enough for the type of job I do. I use it more or less every day and it is a joy to operate but a bit too noisy on some speeds, and leaking oil. Wish I could avoid ear protection. If you forget to wipe of the chuck it will throw oil in your face which is a bad start of the day. It will also spit oil on your legs through 123 feed gear selector slot when feed is engaged.

Have searched forum and found this topic been up for discussion many times earlier but could not find replies applicable to my lathe. Any hints or advice would be much appreciated.

A full overhaul would be a nice project but so many others on the list. Tried an easy way – removed lid and pulled the gear change levers/shafts. Here my findings:

Noise: Found nothing wrong with spindle bearings (roller) or any of the other ball bearings. Spun each shaft disengaged – nice and quiet. When engaging secondary shaft, humming and clattering begins and gets worse when third shaft engaged. Tried to measure flank clearance but difficult to get reliable readings. Got from 0,1 upto 0,3 mm. The smallest spur gear on primary shaft seems to be the most worn. Anyway, I found no catastrophies so guess I will have to live with the noise and to be honest, it is not a big problem. Emptied a can of STP in the gearbox – no difference. I use a good circulating oil ISO 46. Is there something I have missed?

Leaks: From rear spindle end. From gearbox over to chuck-end spindle bearing reservoir and further out from spindle end. From speed shift axles.

Found that these shift axles were sealed off by lip seals which first thought were leather but center shaft had a removable housing that revealed a pressed in lip seal of some kind of rubber which was rock hard. Shafts no 1 and 3 seems to have seals retained by some kind of pressfit washers. Did not want to pull them until I know exactly how they are fitted. Axles had some scratches so polished them, replaced the broken or bent springs, smeared the lipseals with Omega seal saver and put it together again. Now just a small leak from one shaft remains so situation is acceptable.

Spindle: cannot find any good description how this is sealed off – is it some kind of slinger or labyrinth with return holes? Could grooves/holes be blocked by dirt? How to remove spindle shaft is well described in ops handbook but do not want to do this until I know what I´m dealing with.

Apron will also need attention – this has been thoroughly described by Mr Clement in his excellent videos so believe I will be able to carry out an overhaul.

Grateful for hints on noise and oil leaks


Lars

is it some kind of slinger or labyrinth with return holes?

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Like many of its contemporaries, no rubbing seals on spindle - LABYRINTH was the accepted plan

What this amounts to is there is nothing at all preventing oil from coming out if you do something to tilt the machine enough.

The normal "little bit" coming out in use was taken care of by the return drains, which can indeed become blocked

Johnoder,


Thank you for clarifying spindle leak issue. With that information I will definitively remove spindle and make sure grooves and holes are free from dirt.

Kind rgds

Lars

Do treat the spindle bearings exactly like GOLD. They are Class Zero Precision Timkens, something unlikely to be obtainable today

I have no experience with Hendey lathes but I was wondering if there might be some way to get a wire or pipe cleaner into the drain passages where they drain back into the headstock to try unblocking them without taking out the spindle ?
Would filling the headstock with diesel fuel or mineral spirits and running at low speed with no load for a short time help to flush out the dirt ?

Jim

Jim,

Having learnt from Johnoder how precious the spindle bearings are I have now come to second thoughts abt dismantling out of fear of doing damage. It is worth the effort to see if it is possible to reach ev oil return passages with a wire as you suggest. Will let you know outcome.
Tks for your ideas+


Lars

I found a suggestion in a rebuild log (might have been KIMFAB's, can't recall exactly) regarding cleaning out narrow oil passages: a small gauge cable, such as found on bicycles. Resilient, fairly rigid and cheap. I haven't needed to do it, but I filed it away for future use.

Katou

Just to end this thread, wanted to share the result. In search for oil leaks, I removed the spindle, following the manual (Tks Tony Griffith). Everything went by the book until the rear end feed gear would not come off with a regular gear puller. Could not understand why it was stuck so bad until I saw that the gear had cut the key and turned on the spindle. Cannot understand how this could have happened (not on my shift) - even if you run the carriage against stop with the lead screw engaged, I would have imagined something in the apron or Nortonbox would have collapsed first. Anyway it was clear that serious force would be need to pull off the gear. The gap behind it is very small and even an SKF split collar for bearing race puller would fit.

Instead, I drilled and tapped the gear and bolted on a collar with a HD bracket behind so I could use a 25t jack. Since the Hendey was dismantled, all I had left to make the tools was the crappy VLG bench lathe and the Sajo mill so it took a while.

Finally the gear came off and wasn't a pretty sight but managed to restore the damaged surfaces - not perfect but will have to do for now, and made a new key.

A brace against the nose and a 1" drawbar through spindle finally persuaded it to come out. Also here I had to use more force than should be needed. Reason turned out to be fretting corrosion between bearing inner race and spindle. SKF anti-fret paste was used when assembling again. By using tailstock and support, sliding spindle in and out became a controlled and safe operation. The spindle is quite heavy.

After all the misfortune, it was nice to discover that the Timken roller bearings seemed to be in very good condition (after 80 years of use!). They were marked 6-17.37 which means they are the original bearings. Upon my thread last year "Hendey lathe in Sweden", the guru Hendeyman kindly looked into his archives and advised that this lathe was completed at the factory August 18, 1937.

I could not find any real cause for the oil leaks - there were no blocked grooves or passages. Understand now that what keeps the oil were it should be is matter of precisely machined fillers and housings which after 80 years of use will of course show signs of wear. All I could do was to ensure that all end surfaces of sleeves, collars and gear were true and smooth.

Putting it all together again went smoothly but you have to feed the spindle back slowly and keep an eye on the collars, gear and spindle clutch so nothing gets stuck or damaged. The final pull was effected with drawbar through spindle blocked on rear end of gearbox.

All of this took almost two weeks instead of the planned weekend. Not sure that I have accomplished anything but it feels nice to know the state of things and the spindle bearings are now properly adjusted. Too early to say anything about leak situation but sofar looks good.

Next challenge will be the apron but that will have to wait since other jobs are piling up and spring is approaching and there are cars and boats to be dusted off and started up

Lars

Just some more pictures - the Hendey is operational again.

Lars

HendeySwede said:

View attachment 251833View attachment 251834View attachment 251835View attachment 251836View attachment 251837

Just some more pictures - the Hendey is operational again.

Lars

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That's not a Sabb marine diesel flywheel in the background of picture 1 is it? I've got a 16HP one on the bench in my workshop waiting for some attention.

PDW

PDW

Not so far off, but no, the flywheel is for a Swedish Seffle 10 HP semi-diesel (see thread "Seffle 10 HP hotbulb engine" if you're interested. Not so familiar with Sabb - is yours a model G or is it the 2 cylinder?

Lars

Lars,

Thanks for posting your work on the Hendey. I'm hoping I don't have to get that far into mine any time soon but all the photos you've put up will help if I do. Glad you're back up and running.

Craig

I have a 14" Hendey exactly like the one in the photo. I have no leaks anywhere. Spindle bearings do not use the same oil as in the gearbox and have separate oil level sight glasses. Not sure why your getting oil out of the quick change gear box, there is no oil in it where the opening is for the thread selector. Next to it is the range selector, it has oil and a level sight glass. There is a piston pump pushing oil up to a channel cut under the the cover above the thread selector section. What you might have is something blocking the hole allowing the oil to return from the thread selector to the range side. My Hendey is quiet when the feed gear is disengaged at the rear of the machine. Makes very little noise at 1000RPM. With the feed engaged but the direction lever in neutral it still is quite noise free and remains about the same when the range selector is in neutral. (Down and not in one of the numbers ranges) However when all is engaged the feed gears are quite noisy above 500ish RPM and really make a racket at 1000RPM. I have found no reason for it. However a few days ago the range was difficult to bring it up into range 2 and 3, quite noisy even in back gear! I found that the range selector handle will twist and force the driving gear against the next gear that's for the next range selection. By adjusting that my feed gear box is not very noisy at speeds below 500RPM. I do have a P&W 16" C that when I got it oil poured out the front bearing, it was so bad the former owner fitted and Aluminum ring between the chuck and the headstock. I disassembled the headstock and removed the spindle but I had to remove all the other gears. On this machine there is no oil in the headstock and a few large openings on the bottom. All the gears were perfect except the large back gear was not painted red like all the others. While removing it I dropped a shifter in the hole, a magnet brought up part of the original gear. What I assumed happen was the gear was broken and replaced, spindle bearing were replaced too. When doing so the repairman did not put a spacer in the correct location. There is no seal in most lathe headstocks they have a slinger ring that oil will be centrifugally spun off into a grove with a large hole returning oil that came off the bearing back into the headstock. he slinger was not in the correct location so oil flowed along the spindle and out the front. I reassembled the lathe correctly and not not even a drop leaks out of the spindle! BTW the oil for the headstock is stored far below and pumped to all the bearing and gears.
Getting back to the noisy feed gear box, it works fine and when in speeds above 500RPM I remove the feed. I'm thinking it could be similar to the range lever creating noise so when I get a chance I'll dig into it.
I edited my post and added this because looking at the photo of your lathe it's not exactly like mine. The sight glass for the quick change on my lathe is below the range selector lever and the casting extends below the casting for the thread selection lever. My feed gearbox oil reservoir is to the right of yours and under the range gears. OOOOpppppss!

When I screw-up I do a good job! I checked my Hendey that's similar to the one in the photo. (I have 3 of them) It is slightly different not only what I mentioned in the previous post but the angle of the thread changing lever slot is reversed, mine is lowest on the right. And my acceptable noise level is at the speed when the back gear is disengaged, middle lever at the slowest available and Right lever at the fastest (300ish RPM) Thinking I should check my problem since it is similar and possible we can find the cure I dropped the range selector (123)out of gear and sound level didn't change as I thought it did! Looking at the gearing it seemed the objectionable sound level came from the compound idler gear. I decided to remove it but I loosened the bolt as the Lathe was running. Loosening the bolt made a major decrease in the sound level, thinking it was too tight I removed the assembly. It's not possible to over tighten it, the shaft is longer than the compound gear set. I tinkered with it for a while, no matter what I did if I pulled the bolt tight the noise returned, The tighter I tighten the bolt the louder the noise! I gave up, tightened the bolt to the point the noise started to increase and went on finishing the job in the lathe. I did notice the bolt is slightly bent, I straightened it some and increased the hole in the shaft but it didn't seem to help. Loosening the bolt now lets me run the lathe 2 steps below top speed before the noise is objectionable.

I see a Chrysler product slant six exhaust/intake manifold on the shelf. Nosy people looking around your shop.
I like your lathe and mill.

Froneck,

Thank you for taking your time to comment in such detail. First of all we must keep in mind that my lathe has probably suffered abuse from previous ignorant owners and cannot be expected to be in perfect condition. Also pls note that my lathe is the metric version which basically is the same as your contemporary imperial 14". It differs in the feed gearing and the leadscrew and some other details but it should not be different in respect of noise/leak problems.

The noise I found disturbing comes from the main gearbox. I found that noise started when engaging primary shaft and then increased when intermediate and spindle was engaged. I think the reason is simply that the gears are worn. You should've seen the oil that I drained off - seems like they filled the head with used oil from an old rear axle. I can accept that feed gears are noisy since they are straight cut and open. I can live with the noise situation - there's not much more I can do about it other than maintaining the lathe in a correct way. I read with interest your findings abt the idler gear though and might give that some attention.

The oil leaks were definitely from spindle ends since I had to fill up reservoirs all the time. The oiling system for the feed gears in the Norton box is working perfectly and does not consume any oil. Hendey really made a marvelous system here that delivers metered amount of drops on to each gear. The oil that came out of the 123 selector opening leaked from rear spindle end down on idler gear and further. It seems like leak situation has improved just by ensuring that all the spindle parts were true and smooth and correctly assembled.

I am envious of your oiltight imperial Hendey.
Pls let me know if you have more details of interest - being only an amateur I really appreciate all input.

Lars

mllud22 said:

I see a Chrysler product slant six exhaust/intake manifold on the shelf. Nosy people looking around your shop.
I like your lathe and mill.

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mllud22,

I am amazed at what the knowledgeable people on this forum can recognize - yes it's a slant-six manifold from my MoPar period. I don't mind decent people looking around my shop. Next time I might have something really tricky for you to ponder upon.

Lars

HendeySwede said:

PDW

Not so far off, but no, the flywheel is for a Swedish Seffle 10 HP semi-diesel (see thread "Seffle 10 HP hotbulb engine" if you're interested. Not so familiar with Sabb - is yours a model G or is it the 2 cylinder?

Lars

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It's a 2 cylinder 16HP with the controllable pitch prop and painted almost that exact shade of colour. I think those engines are really excellent bits of equipment, pity they stopped making them.

I also have a Bukh DV36 marine diesel I bought new and fitted to my 12m steel sailboat. If I could have bought a 30HP Sabb with controllable pitch prop, that's what I would have fitted.

PDW