I'm late to the game but for what it's worth, I had the same problem of the cover rubbing on the gearing because of a loose hinge pin. I read this post and some of the other posts on this problem, bought a small ingot of babbit, researched pouring babbit bearings, etc. Just now I decided just to try reheating the existing babbit, and it worked fine. As an attempt to contain the babbit metal if it ran out, I put a little piece of tinfoil on top of the hinge pin "receiver" and pushed the pin/cover through it. I had coated the tinfoil with soot from the acetylene torch [oxygen off], but I don't think I really needed to do all that. Then I just heated the babbit on the top of the cover with the acetylene torch until it looked melted, maybe a few seconds longer. It seems to have solved the problem for now. I positioned the cover--with great precision, dont you know-- by shoving a red rag between it and the gearing. Earlier I had tried displacing the babbit metal with a punch from under the cover, as did the previous owner of the lathe, to no avail (that technique is suggested in other threads). If the pin is as loose as mine was, you would have to displace a lot of metal for that to ever work. Anyway, it's worth trying this first before you commit to a full-on melt-out and babbit replacement, especially given the price of the material. Actually I was interested in trying out the full replacement, and if this fix fails some day I guess I'll give it a try.