Member postings for Hopper

Might be one of those perennial arguments with its adherents either way, bit like oils!

I am having lunch tomorrow with an old farmer originally from the South Island so I will ask him which way he did it. He is one of those guys who can fix anything with a bit of No.8 wire after working all his life on the land.

But when you think of it, if the hub has grease nipples and the seals were installed lip-side in, if you pumped the hub full of grease and kept pumping, it would/could push the seal right out of the hub from the hydraulic pressure. Installed lip-side out, the seal would let the grease flow out, and stop the dust from coming in. And as you say, low speed operation may be ok with the bearing chock full of grease.

I have never seen a seal fitted otherwise than with the garter spring and lip facing toward the oil or grease in the bearing. (But I have never worked on ag equipment) But if the workshop manual for your machine says otherwise, follow that.

That includes double lip seals, which usually face the same way as a single lip seal.

Normally it is not recommended to pump a bearing so full of grease that it comes out the seal. The recommendation is they need air space inside the bearing for the grease to flow around in there. One or two squirts a year should be enough. If it is packed full the grease can overheat and deteriorate. Again, if the factory workshop manual or owners manual says otherwise, follow that.

If the machine is so old that it came with leather seals, which always puked eveywhere, then it probably had instructions to keep up the grease supply regularly. But if replacing the leather with modern double lip seals you probably don't need to top up the grease regularly. Like wheel bearings in a car, they pretty much will run for life without fresh grease as long as none is leaking out.

Edited By Hopper on 02/03/2023 02:35:00

You may find it tough going trying to thread the head of an allen head cap screw with a die. They are made of tough stuff that does not machine well in many cases. Might be easier to try the suggested die in standard holder guided by the tailstock chuck on a bit of mild steel.

Looks good. I actually like that colour. A bit of red pinstripe round the flywheel or some such might set it off a bit.

So you run Nissan electronic ignition coil hooked up to points instead of a Hall effect sensor trigger it? I didn't know you could do that. Handy to know.

Which sliding parts of your lathe? Most lathes use oil to lubricate their slideways and other sliding parts. Usually hydraulic oil of about ISO 32 grade. These days you can buy special slideway oil for the ways that is a bit heaver and tackier. But ISO 32 will do the job.

The problem with greasing a lathe is the swarf sticks to it and forms a nice abrasive paste. Also the grease is too thick to get into the small spaces and lubricate between the sliding spaces.

Some lathes, eg Myford, have nipples on them that look like grease nipples but are actually oil nipples for use with an oil gun.

He was following his inclination!

I have a piece of brass or bronze bar about 1" diameter by 6" long that I use. Works a treat. Used end-on. If the job is aluminium I might put a scrap of ally over it before tapping.

Two tricks to tapping down a job in a milling vice etc are: 1. Tighten the vice up before tapping down. 2. Follow through on the tap. Don't just tap and pull away. Bring the bar (or hammer) down on the job and sort of hold it there firmly for a second or two so it dampens any rebound bounce in the job.

Edited By Hopper on 01/03/2023 23:27:36

Edited By Hopper on 01/03/2023 23:28:08

The Myord lever tailstock is the same for both ML7 and Super 7. But the Super 7 requires a threaded stepped ring that screws into the back of the tailstock and the regular lever attachment clamps on to that . I don't have the details as I don't have access to a Super 7. There is good info including a drawing in this thread though LINK

Edited By Hopper on 01/03/2023 03:56:56

If it screws most of the way on and then gets tight, it could be binding on the register collar, not the thread. Inspect for dings and bruises and file or stone any high spots or burrs down, on both spindle and chucks. A three-sided file can be made into a scraper to go round the edge of the register recess in the chuck, which is where most burrs occur.

Carefull inspection and careful use of a very small triangular file or knife file or proper thread file can likewise fix most thread dings and burrs.

And there are production tolerances on those parts. Maybe the register collar is just a few tenths of a thou too big and needs cleaning up with some emery. But don't try that unless you are 100 per cent sure that is the problem. Its more likely there are burrs and dings with raised edges causing problems. .

Edited By Hopper on 01/03/2023 03:49:51

There have been threads on this topic before and some people have found that chucks off South Bends will not fit on to a Boxford. Others may have found differently, I don't remember.

It does depend to some extent on production tolerances,  amount of thread truncation and 50-plus years of wear as to whether there is enough clearance for two dissimilar angle threads to screw together. Only way to know is to fit and try.

If purchasing a chuck or faceplate sight unseen, it would be far safest to purchase like for like. Get a Boxford chuck for a Boxford or a US Atlas chuck for a US Atlas etc.

There is the option of running a tap down the chuck thread to make it match your spindle thread. Tracy Tools has most of the common spindle sized taps. Or even set the chuck up carefully on a faceplate and take a very light screwcutting cut down the thread to clean it up to correct matching spec. You can cut a 1:1 ratio thread (8TPI) without damaging the change gears or leadscrew etc. Done it more than once. Not a drama.

Edited By Hopper on 28/02/2023 09:18:57

1 per cent of a 15mm wide pulley is 0.15mm crown. About 5 thou in old money. Thirty seconds with a flat file in the lathe would take care of that. 

Or use Jason's pictured method to create 3 flats, then finish with file.

Edited By Hopper on 28/02/2023 09:00:00

I would not rely on anything on the internet.

No idea about that particular one, but a lot of those "comparison" sites list only those who pay to be on there. All a little too cosy to be truly unbiased.

Yes it looks like a job for Loctite retaining compound, the high temp stuff just to be sure. It is pretty amazing stuff.

Time honored method is to make a drill bush out of silver steel and harden in oil or water. But such bushes are available commercially readymade for use in industry.

Yes I think for a pulley 60mm diam. and 15mm wide I would be tempted to file the curve on there, using a 10" flat single cut mill saw file or the like, with plenty of chalk on it as Dave H says and frequent wire brushing with a card file. A simple template made from a bit of sheetmetal or even cardboard cut to the desired radius would help. At that size it should only need 1mm or 1.5mm of dome I should imagine. You could put a little cut around each edge of the pulley blank at the target depth for guidance.

Interesting. I tried it on my ancient (that's 10 years old in today's parlance) Samsung S2 Android phone and there was no embed option under the share icon. But on my newish HP W10 laptop, there is. With the increasing use of phones and Android tablets I guess that makes things hard for many people. This really is the Cornish boiler of websites!

I should think 8mm bolts would do the job. I was thinking I might add a couple of dowel pins between the base and the round turret for positive location though. Or at least countersunk screws coming up from the bottom so they locate on the angled countersinks. I would not rely on clamping force there because any tiny movement will affect finish, chatter, precision etc.

On the vaguely similar fabricated one I made for my Myford, I welded those two pieces together to form in effect one solid block. Solid is the object of the whole exercise with such a toolpost.

Edited By Hopper on 26/02/2023 03:03:04

+1 on Neil's suggestion above. And be sure to use good quality allen keys such as Unbrako. Junk ones round off easily.

Another dodge if the hex hole is still reasonably intact is some coarse valve grinding paste in the hole and on the allen key to give it some grip.

Or sometimes you can hammer an oversized good quality Torx driver into the remains of the hex hole and get a grip that way via its sharp splines.

If you do resort to drilling -- which as said can be tough on high tensile screws -- left hand drill bits that spin in the reverse direction are the best bet. Run very slow in intermittent bursts in a slow but torquey battery drill seems to quite often grab the broken screw and wind it out before needing to fully drill through.

+1 on this. A slot drill with a hardened guide bush is far less likely to wander than even a stub drill. You are trying to drill out an offset hole in two different materials, one hard and one soft, that's a big ask for a drill bit.

I can't really tell from the photo but you might be able to make your own oversize threaded insert and drill and tap to suit after removing the bolt if there is not enough thread to use deeper in the original bolt hole.

Or alternatively, if the existing helicoil is securely in place, is there any reason you can't use it as is? If it is not quite straight, you might have to enlarge the hole in the ring that it retains and maybe even machine a tapered washer to suit? A bit bodgey for sure, but may be an alternative if you absolutely don't have enough "meat" there for inserts etc and the threaded hole has not extra threads deeper inside. Better to "bodge" than destroy an expensive wheel if there is not enough metal there to play around with, and it does look very thin there. Not familiar with Guzzi wheels but the bolts are not transmitting drive, just holding the retaining ring for the cush rubbers, are they not?

Edited By Hopper on 26/02/2023 02:55:40

The same with posting links to YouTube videos please. If you click on the YouTube icon just next to the Link icon then follow the instructions to click on Share on Youtube and copy the Embed code into the box. Easy peasy.

It is just a couple of keystrokes and you will get way more viewers of the video because they can A. see the opening image and title of the video and decide if it is of interest to them or not and B. just click on it and go straight to it. I don't bother to look otherwise. Too time consuming to get through to YouTube via copy and paste link etc and then I might not be interested when I actually see it.