Colchesters (and Harrisons) were always built down to a price.
The market aim was excellent value for money with a decent feature list. Which they pretty much hit bang on. As such they sold well but in production or similar serious use they were disposable machines to be destroyed for the value of their production. Over the years general quality and durability improved due to investment in production facilities but anything prior to the later squarehead versions has issues that will surface in old age. The important thing is that Colchester never skimped on spindle bearings so even a geriatric machine can have good work coaxed out of it. By the time the squareheads came along quality and performance was good enough to displace most of the lower to mid end toolroom lathes from the market.
It's probably germane to note that you can still get very respectable quality Colchester clones at decent value for money. Which suggests that overall the feature set is about right for the market. Just like all the Bridgeport clones. Not perfect but good enough for lots of folk.
Being well featured and relatively inexpensive lots of Colchesters ended up in dedicated support shops for large firms, hospitals, utilities et al when replacement components had to be made "right now" to keep things going. Being lightly used, despite age, these give a false impression of quality and capability when they come on the market. Although the big dispersal of dedicated, support, mechanical workshops pretty much ended a decade or two ago many of these machines ended up on similar light duties or hobby shop environments and are coming around for the third or fourth time with, probably, the equivalent of a couple or three years full time use on them. Basically nicely run-in. These are the ones to go for. Ex training shop lathes tended to have rather more use but certainly not enough to wear them out so next best choice.
Forget one from a proper workshop that got run all day, every day. It was clapped out 20 years ago.
Clive
