DocsMachine
Titanium
- Joined
- Jan 8, 2005
- Location
- Southcentral, AK
Last fall, I saw on the local CL, an ad for a '16" Metal Lave, Spring Sealed". Apart from a phone number, that was the entirety of the description. I called, and it turned out to be a 16" Springfield gearhead lathe. There was apparently some confusion between the seller and the person who actually posted the ad.
It was only about 30 miles away, so I drove out to have a look.
It had supposedly been sitting there for a year and a half, possibly two, but the deterioration of the tarp that had been covering- among other signs- suggested it'd been there somewhat longer than that.
There was some damage, in the form of four broken handles, plus some wear, along with evidence of past repairs and crashes. The compound was not stock, the tailstock handwheel had been broken and badly rebrazed, the clutch handles had been broken and rebrazed, and one setting in the QCGB was marked, in hand-lettered paint, "oil only, do not use".
On the other hand, the castings all looked fairly sound, bed wear appeared minor- given it's clear prior abuse- and once I'd opened up the headstock, the gears and bearings looked just fine.
The price was fair (not much above scrap) and I thought that most of the problems could be fixed, so I decided to buy it.
I got it home with minimal trouble, though the scale at the truck depot up the street wasn't working that day, so I wasn't able to get an actual weight. To unload, my neighbor brought over his 966 with some forks, and set it on the apron of the shop. Heavy equipment makes that kind of thing easy.
Now it was time to properly evaluate the machine. Obviously I wasn't able to run it under power where it'd been stored, so I was taking a chance of buying a pig in a poke. So before I spent too much time or treasure on the thing, I wanted to get it under power, to at least evaluate the headstock and gearing- if something was missing a tooth in there, chances are it'd be time to just scrap the whole works...
So I cleaned some of the old chips out of the QCGB...
Drained, filtered and replaced the headstock oil...
Fixed two of the broken levers...
Hooked up a temporary static phase converter...
And fired it up!
The gearbox proved to be in fine shape, with no real noises beyond the usual straight-cut spur gear whirrs. The repaired shifters worked smoothly and firmly, the oil pump worked just fine and with plenty of apparent volume, and the clutch was quite positive. Most any other damage I figured I could repair, as long as the headstock was okay, and no major castings had significant damage.
Unfortunately, winter was closing in fast, and both the mechanical issues and the dirty/rusty condition meant I couldn't just hose it down, give it a coat of porch paint and call it good. In the next installment, we'll start pulling it apart and doing a more detailed evaluation of the overall condition.
Doc.
It was only about 30 miles away, so I drove out to have a look.
It had supposedly been sitting there for a year and a half, possibly two, but the deterioration of the tarp that had been covering- among other signs- suggested it'd been there somewhat longer than that.
There was some damage, in the form of four broken handles, plus some wear, along with evidence of past repairs and crashes. The compound was not stock, the tailstock handwheel had been broken and badly rebrazed, the clutch handles had been broken and rebrazed, and one setting in the QCGB was marked, in hand-lettered paint, "oil only, do not use".
On the other hand, the castings all looked fairly sound, bed wear appeared minor- given it's clear prior abuse- and once I'd opened up the headstock, the gears and bearings looked just fine.
The price was fair (not much above scrap) and I thought that most of the problems could be fixed, so I decided to buy it.
I got it home with minimal trouble, though the scale at the truck depot up the street wasn't working that day, so I wasn't able to get an actual weight. To unload, my neighbor brought over his 966 with some forks, and set it on the apron of the shop. Heavy equipment makes that kind of thing easy.
Now it was time to properly evaluate the machine. Obviously I wasn't able to run it under power where it'd been stored, so I was taking a chance of buying a pig in a poke. So before I spent too much time or treasure on the thing, I wanted to get it under power, to at least evaluate the headstock and gearing- if something was missing a tooth in there, chances are it'd be time to just scrap the whole works...
So I cleaned some of the old chips out of the QCGB...
Drained, filtered and replaced the headstock oil...
Fixed two of the broken levers...
Hooked up a temporary static phase converter...
And fired it up!
The gearbox proved to be in fine shape, with no real noises beyond the usual straight-cut spur gear whirrs. The repaired shifters worked smoothly and firmly, the oil pump worked just fine and with plenty of apparent volume, and the clutch was quite positive. Most any other damage I figured I could repair, as long as the headstock was okay, and no major castings had significant damage.
Unfortunately, winter was closing in fast, and both the mechanical issues and the dirty/rusty condition meant I couldn't just hose it down, give it a coat of porch paint and call it good. In the next installment, we'll start pulling it apart and doing a more detailed evaluation of the overall condition.
Doc.