Member postings for John Greenwood 2

Following on from my last post, I ressembled the tri-lever meshanism and with a bit of adjustment was able to run the machine on all three speeds. I tightened the shell screws as tight as I could, and there was no discernable increase in stiffness in the bearing.

I reassembled all the rest of the parts and ran the lathe and tested the levers. There were some squeaky sounds and a few times the fastest speed belt became disengaged.

I made some quite small adjustment to the alignment of the belt pulleys and now it seems to back to the status quo (anti bellum).

Now I can get back to the job I was doing!

Thanks to all of you that have contributed to this thread.

Cheers

John

I had concluded that the the main bearing was much too stiff and needed to be sorted before adjusting the belts.

I removed the top shell of the front bearing and gave the exposed sufaces a very fim wipe wth kitchen wipe and three-in-one oil

I then reassembled the top shell with the bolts tighten but not hard. I find that I can turn the shaft with my fingers or with any of the three belts.

I propose to tighten the bolts hard and see if the it gets stiffer.

Should I expect to need to "run it in"?

"Very stiff" means that that, with all three belts a bit loose, I need to use a bit of wood about a foot long in the chuck jaws as a lever to be able to turn it, with some effort.

This belt renewing was precipitated by one of the belts getting jambed while in use with the headstock revolving freely. Therefore it is something I did when taking it off.

I think from the comments above the belts are nearly as they should.

Thanks for the suggestions.

Yes, the spindle was working properly and I think I have put the parts back to where they came from, which also seems to corespond to the manual.

In particular, the headstock parts went back to wher they came from, including the shims, although they might have got swapped back to front.

I do realise that the belts normally slip, but thank you for confirming this.

I note your view that it would be unwise to run the lathe until the main bearing has been sorted. I tend to agree.

I suppose the next step (in a weeks or so) will be to dismantle the headstock.

Thanks for the replys, those pictures make it really clear how it works!

I tightened these adjusters until the belts started gripping but the stiffness of the headstock bearings meant that fastest speed slipped with a squealing sound and with the slowest speed the belt slipped out of the pulleys.

I clearly have not got things back right.

I have successfully (I think) inserted a set of new belts on my Myford Tri Leva lathe. It looks like I need to adjust the individual belst and the what I think is the adjusters have an unfamiliar head:

What tool do I need?

Also the head stock is very stiff. The white metal bearings were a bit scored