BEARING & SPINDLE RE-ASSEMBLY
While I wait to find time to get over to my mates for his lathe & mill to carry on with the Variator mods I wanted to cover up the bearing race on the back of the spindle, don't really want this exposed to grit and dust too long. Cleaned it off carefully with a dry lint free rag and gave it several puffs of compressed air, followed this with a light coating of the oil I'm using for the gearbox (Mobil Velocite No6).
The bearing cover was also cleaned and the bearing surface coated in some oil, I also added a thin bead of silicon sealer/gasket in the corner of the flange so that when bolted home there was an oil seal between it and the lathe mating face.
There is an art to getting this big bearing flange on, naturally the fit is tight and the bearings are 'sloppy' in their support ring to start with so I placed the flange carefully into its rough place, a light tap of a rubber mallet should give just enough purchase for the flange to be self supporting as it just engages with the rebate in the lathe mating surface but not yet on the bearing. I found that M8 x 45mm bolts will screw in from this point and 'pull' the flange on. You must rotate the chuck/spindle all the time as you literally quarter turn each bolt in a circular pattern.
You will feel when the first bearing race meets the flange bearing seat, but as long as you gently turn the chuck & spindle while nipping up the bolts the bearing will go in and the process gets less stressful, there is a point when the second row of bearings hits the bearing seat but the same process will sort this out too. Once the M8 x 45's have done their work you can replace with the actual bolts and finish off the tightening process - spin that spindle the whole time, if it gets snaggy back off a few turns on the bolts and ensure they are nipping up the flange evenly....
Flange on
Next the oil thrower (the correct way round! Yup got that wrong first attempt) followed by the locking ring which has those tiny bolts which lock up the ring and were so tight to remove. Still debating if to loctite them in with some medium goo but not sure yet so they are nipped up with an Allen wrench at the moment
The final cover/flange goes over this lot and I was debating if there was any particular way this should be fitted
Well yes there is, on the inside around the rim you will find a small machined slot and drilled hole, this I can confidently say needs to be at 6o/c so that any oil thrown out into this rim will run to the bottom and drip out via this machined slot and into the oil recovery system. Here is the slot pictured at the bottom..
Ensure a new 'O' ring is also fitted. This gets bolted to the flange already fitted resulting in this..
I test fitted loosely the oil catcher along with its rear tray (which varied in design from machine to machine) and luckily it did not fowl on the new oil line push fit union I screwed into the gearbox drain - phew!
Yes I have sliced off part of that washer, hoping it's the first of only two 'slight' modifications needed to get the new oil feed round to the feed gearbox just behind it, will post the second when I do it! The rest of the lines are all more easy too route.
More later....