Bantam gearbox oil filling

Good afternoon all,

After a while of reading the manual and googling, i am a bit stuck..

I have a colchester 1600 bantam, i need to fill the headstock and gearbox with oil, headstock is fine, a nice big cap to unscrew to fill it, perfect, but, i cannot see where i fill the screw cutting gearbox?

can anyone shed some light to help?

thank you!

nick

Take off the fibreglass gear cover (LHS of lathe).

There is a knurled plug about 25 mm dia on top of the curved surface of the cast cover LHS of the gearbox. It's got a breather hole in the centre. Its just in front of the 100/120 gear cluster.

Unscrew it and there is a 20 mm or thereabouts filler hole below.

HTH Simon

edit If you have a copy of the manual, it's the lower picture on page 6 of the parts book, If you need a copy I can't do it now the wife is on the scanner, but I'll add a picture later

Edited By Simon Williams 3 on 05/11/2020 19:29:16

Thank You Simon, i see the bit now! The manual does not help much here! Even on how much oil the headstock and gearbox hold.. (luckily i found the answers to that on here in another post!).

Much appreciated and thank you again,

nick.

Nick

I recently checked the oil level in my Bantam lower box but found the oil level sightglass was very stained and I couldn't see the oil level so thought it must need topping up.
Added about a pint of oil and still didn't have any level showing in the sightglass, I later found out the reason being it was above the sightglass level all the time.

I found this out by drilling a hole in the centre of the plastic sightglass and allowed 1.5 pints to drain out.
Turned a delrin plug up to fit the drilled hole so now just need to remove the plug when topping up so not to overfill.

Emgee

Edited By Emgee on 05/11/2020 20:22:19

You've got me going now. But the manual does have oil fill capacities, they just hid 'em. Page 18/19 of the User Manual says the headstock takes 6 pints, the gearbox takes 1 pint. Suggests Shell Tellus 27, but that's just a general purpose thinnish hydraulic oil. I use 30 grade in a hydraulic hedge trimmer, I'm sure that'll do the job.

Rgds Simon

Thank you for all of the replies, you have all been of great help! And its all done. (Sorry for the late response, i am moving house, and its been a nightmare, forgetting how heavy some of my machinery is!)

nick.