Giving an old #2 Horizontal and Oil Change

It has been discussed here before but now the thread seems to have disappeared, so I am posting it again. Not long ago our railroad musuem purchased the following mill with the intent of scrapping a trashed Bridgeport base and modifying the ram to fit.

As of Saturday we milled out one side, but it will still need 1more day till the conversion is complete;

Here's some photos of the job so far. First operation was to mill a strip on the side of the machine so that we could get a good reference surface to locate the ram on a side. Then we milled the dovetail. Since my cutter wasn't wide enough to hit it in one pass, I used a red marker to show contact. If you look at the 3rd photo below based on the pattern where the cutter has just barely taken off the ink on one side, but left it on the other I am pretty confident that we are good here. You can't feel much of a ridge at all. Next we cut the strip on the other side.

Only one thing that still has me scratching my head and thinking is how best to put a slight radius on the bottom of the dovetail. I am a bit concerned that I have created a massive stress riser there, and that we really need to blunt the angle. I am thinking I may try to delicately use a die grinder, or maybe even grind the end of a file to be a scraper and get a radius down there. Does anyone have a better idea?



Anyhow now it is time to figure out what oil I need to buy and how much do you think I need?

For all I know last time the oil was changed on this girl was WWII so I want to drain it all and start fresh with quality oil. Anyone care to guess on quantity and type of oil? DTE Heavy Medium (? Gallons), 1 gallon Vactra 2 I have on the list. Would DTE Heavy medium be the good one to choose and how much do you think she will take? Anyone ever done an oil change on an old girl like this?

I will keep you all posted on the rest of the conversion, but it probably won't happen till the week after next.

Adam

The old manuals just say fill them up to the line.

I would use DTE Heavy Medium if it had Timkens, but from the photos its a plain bearing machine. I would use something lighter ISO 46 or ISO 32. This would be DTE Light or Medium.

A 2M with Timkens will have an inset bolted on ring sunk into the column around the spindle nose. Yours lacks this tell tale.

Any of this comes in five gallon pails.

Hello Adam,
I just went through changing out the fluids in my machine so here's my experience.. Gear box ( column/spindle) takes dte medium or dte heavy medium ( iso 46 or iso 68 ) circulating oil. Sump seemed endless.. took 7+ gallons of mobilmet 426.. For the oilers,gibs,etc.. I just use vactra no#2. Hope this helps.. Btw my machine has timken bearings..
Hope this helps.
Stay safe
Calvin
PS fill the gear box to the bottom of the threads in the filler hole.. should take around 3.5 gallons..
( filler hole is the little 90° elbow with the cap on it)

Wow that is more oil than I was expecting. The whole sump is full of cutting oil and I think I will just leave what is there there, I am not quite sure how necessary changing the cutting oil is. Where I am more concerned is the gearbox oil. I guess I will probably go for buying 4 or so gallons of DTE heavy medium.

Before you do that you should read post about yours having plain bearings

You sure are basterdizin that mill by putting a B..........ort overarm on it...

Everyone I've ever see that mounted a BP mill spindle just made a adapter that fit the back of the BP spindles casting and the other end of the adapter slides on the CINCINNATI overarms dovetail... MUCH easier to make and easier to use.

I'd imagine you could buy that adapter for cheeep or maybe 30$... just have to find one.

johnoder said:

Before you do that you should read post about yours having plain bearings

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I tired to go back and search for that post however with the new upgrade I can only see 2 pages worth of history in this section. I would love to go back to that thread and reread it now that we are getting more and more involved with the machine finally after the project had to be set aside for a few months. Any ideas on how to find that one, or did it disappear? With the "improvements"?

Gary as for your comments, I am not sure how we are bastardizing anything here. If anything this seems to me to be the best thing to happen to our poor Bridgeport in years. I have never seen a more abused Bridgeport in my life! Basically if you have ever seen weathered wood when the grain structure starts sticking all the way out, that is what the ways look like on the poor old Bridgeport. The table you can shake about 1/4" in either direction. If you take dowel pins and measure the dovetail at the front middle and rear or the knee there is about 0.070" difference in the middle. It is horrendous. Meanwhile the Cincinnati is in great shape. She is nice and tight and works real well. Other than removing the ram and putting it aside we aren't making any changes to the machine to mount the Bridgeport ram on the top of her.

Add to that the fact that the Cincinnati was likely to be scrapped if we didn't get her when we did I think we are doing her a big favor. I couldn't find any of the adapters you speak of but the ones I have seen you can't seem to nod or swing the head either. Thus I think we are really doing both machines a favor and only sending a real junk base off the Bridgeport to the scrapper when all is said and done. All that being said if you can get me that adapter you speak of for $30 send me a PM and I will send payment ASAP!

Post #2 in this thread

Photos scanned of mine that had Timkens, See the inset ring around spindle nose? Plain bearing
machines are identified by lacking this feature

johnoder said:

Post #2 in this thread

Photos scanned of mine that had Timkens, See the inset ring around spindle nose? Plain bearing
machines are identified by lacking this feature



View attachment 48737

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Hi John,

Sorry I overlooked those comments. I also really wish I could still access the original thread on this as your advice back then was excellent, but now appears gone. I wonder if the old archives will come back online over the next few days. At any rate do you think that the 3.5gal oil capacity should more or less be valid with this machine too?

I have no idea at all. I would just buy a 5 gallon pail and see how far that went. That's about minimum anyway unless it is very common stuff that some place sells enough of to stock it by the one gallon.

Hello Adam,
Here's a picture of my machine.. it's a 2L.. and it took the better part of a 5 gallon bucket..
Mr. Oder sir,
Are those shop made trip dogs on the front of your machine ?
Stay safe
Calvin

Are those shop made trip dogs on the front of your machine ?

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Good question - photos are from 1976, machine sold in 1980.

Just an update, here's a photo of our new Cinciport.



Overall it wasn't too bad of a conversion to do. One thing I should mention is that the ram both the factory made one and the modified Bridgeport one are in there tight! The Cincinnati ram once we ran out of rack to move it along took quite a big of hammering on with a hand sledgehammer and a wooden block to soften the blows to get out. The Bridgeport ram was machined to match the Cincinnati one and it too went in real tight. But now hopefully we will get a ton of new work out of the old girl. To think she probably ran 2-3shifts during WWII and still is real nice and tight especially to our used and abused old bridgeport is quite amazing.

As to the oil, I need to buy some more. I bought 3 gallons but still need to add a little to the main sump as it doesn't quite make it to the line.

Now for the next question. Does anyone know where to find the drain plug on this gearbox?



I would have thought it would be the lower hex bolt but removing that it looks more like a bolt than a drain plug unless it truly is a dual purpose bolt and that gearbox is dry. In a previous post I recall someone talking about how hard it was to find a drain plug that was painted over with several layers.

Any ideas?

Any ideas?

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Total loss - no drain pugs. The big oiler has tubes that go to points Cincinnati thought were important

adammil1 said:

Just an update, here's a photo of our new Cinciport.



Now for the next question. Does anyone know where to find the drain plug on this gearbox?

View attachment 49394

I would have thought it would be the lower hex bolt but removing that it looks more like a bolt than a drain plug unless it truly is a dual purpose bolt and that gearbox is dry.

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All the way underneath maybe? A thin-head hex plug?

Regards.

Mike

Are you replacing/derating the Cincy motor, or are you keeping the horizontal spindle as an option?

Seems you could supply 240 on the 480 hookup, and get adequate power for the feeds?

S_W_Bausch said:

Are you replacing/derating the Cincy motor, or are you keeping the horizontal spindle as an option?

Seems you could supply 240 on the 480 hookup, and get adequate power for the feeds?

Click to expand...

The plan will always be to have the horizontal spindle as a secondary means of cutting. I know I have had my share of jobs where having a horizontal spindle would have been handy so now the Cinciport has both a horizontal and a vertical one. Outside of that a decision still likely needs to be made when it comes to tooling up this spindle. The spindle is an antiquated and obsolete taper such that one can't find tooling for it anymore. We have both a horizontal arbor for it that I think is 1.25" dia as well as a 1" dia bore endmill holder that we used to do the milling of the Bridgeport overarm. The two ideas that I am running with in my head will be to either do a bore in place with a lathe compound of the mill's spindle to bring it out to a 50taper, finish grinding with a toolpost grinder. The second idea is to just buy a set of ER-40 collets or something with a straight shank. As of now we haven't given it too much thought. I guess the only other minor PITA will be the need to run the large motor to use the power feeds but I think we can live with that. We shall see how things go.

As for the oil sump down in the lower gearbox. John, do you really think there is no sump in there to drain? There is a rather large oil cover on it, so I would think it should take quite a bit of oil, I would assume I should use DTE light here too?

As for the oil sump down in the lower gearbox. John, do you really think there is no sump in there to drain? There is a rather large oil cover on it, so I would think it should take quite a bit of oil, I would assume I should use DTE light here too

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I had this box apart on my 2M, there is no sump. Can't recall if it just runs out into machine base or what - probably cant remember because it was 36 years ago.

Any oil will work fine here - even way oil. Very slow moving gears and plain bearings.

Hello Adam,
Yes it's a total loss system. It pees oil all over the machine base. I'm using vactra no#2 in mine.. Just fill the oiler and watch it weep. Just an aside that's why I went to the straight cutting oil ( among other reasons) as the way/gear oil drains into the sump and I wanted oil that was 'compatible', which the mobil rep assured the mobilmet 426 and the vactra #2 would be fine together... wanted to avoid the tramp oil issues one gets with soluble oil. Just my take on things.. you may have other ideas and needs..
Stay safe
Calvin
PS what type of tooling are you looking for for the spindle ? B&S 12 ?

PS what type of tooling are you looking for for the spindle ? B&S 12 ?

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Non #50 National Standard / NMTB #50 2Ms had the same exact spindle flange as #50 but a 14 B&S taper hole. Easy to tell, close to 2 11/32" I.D. on big end instead of 2 3/4"