Cincinnati Shaper Oil Tower Flowrate Question

[BoxcarPete]

I'm (finally) working on getting my Cinci 16 HD shaper (which I've owned since April) into service. So far, I've scrubbed out the sump, the other sump, replaced the oil and now I'm looking to make sure oil is getting to all the important bits. As far as I can tell it isn't.



The picture above is the gravity-feed tower with the motor running, clutch engaged, and transmission in neutral. I've run it on one of the slower speeds and without the clutch at all, only thing that seems to matter is clutch. In any case, the oil coming up from the left-center hole is pretty lazy, and drips right down the right-center hole and then dribbles all over the crank block on the inside. This is good. From my reading I understand that this is probably the most important thing to be getting lube, but the fine folks in southern Ohio didn't put all those other ones in there just for fun.

I've plugged the crank block feed with my finger enough so the others get lube, but the pulsing action of the pump threatens to overflow everything right when it starts to drain into any of the other holes. As far as I can tell they do drain down though.

Is there some way to adjust this or get more flow so I can have oil everywhere, or am I looking at something like tearing it apart far enough to rebuild the oil circulating pump?

 

[hvnlymachining]

The top portion should have something like a shower head in it for the oil to drip into each of the ports, it's not supposed to just flood into the cup but rather travel through a tube up to the top where the oil flow is regulated by each drip "jet".

 

[BoxcarPete]

The top portion should have something like a shower head in it for the oil to drip into each of the ports, it's not supposed to just flood into the cup but rather travel through a tube up to the top where the oil flow is regulated by each drip "jet".

You know what, I think I read something about felt and I bet that's exactly what it's for. If I put a slice of felt in there it should soak the oil up and help it get to all the distribution points. Thanks for jogging my memory!

For some reason the only manual I can find now describes the pressurized system instead of the gravity fed one, but I know for sure I read something about felt for the gravity feed oiler somewhere.