Great job, I used Colly students when I worked for RR aero engines.

Good job Dave. Is it normal for the inside of Lathes to be painted (bright yellow caught my eye) ? I am sure there is a good reason and remember reading somewhere about the inside of engines being painted.

Now dust of the Mini and go for a ride ......

What a great feeling it must be, to have saved something so long mistreated and to have the result come out so well.

Norm

We used to have a Clausing Colchester at work.  Like you said, it leaked oil badly but was generally reliable apart from some electrical repairs made by previous owners.  When we replaced it, our Clausing went to the local university where it is still being used by their motor sports team.  It's always good to see old tools still in use.

You did a really nice job on that one.  I am envious! 

Nice work, looks like this keeps you off the streets.

Friend of mine passed a few years ago, he was a tool and die maker, his daughters were going to have to pay someone to haul it all away.

I gave a pickup truck full of tools away and one was a metal lathe, old but worked fine, if I remember correctly it was a Miller Falls. Went 2 hours south to southern Ohio.(friend from gunbroker)

Warmed my heart to now his tools would live on and work, knowing I saved the girls some money. Sold what I could and gave them the money, gave away much more. As many of us age we need to take stock and not burden our loved ones with are crap/stuff. I know Earl wished he had done that.

Wish I had room for the lathe,you can always use a lathe.

Good pictures and info, thanks for sharing your story.

SxS (that's Side by Side for those that don't know)

DISCLAIMER: OT - Thought I'd share this with you guys, not strictly "mini" related, but it does have SC CR gears LOL! If you are scared of gearbox internals, or are on 56K dial-up, turn back, or go get a cup of tea and come back later!

A little backwards, but this is the lathe that is now back in operation all leveled and sitting pretty:

In the USA, it is known as a Clausing colchester 15", but all brits know this as the Colchester Triumph 2000. I have a soft-spot for the colly's, partially because it, and the Harrison M300 was what I spent all my time on at college, but also because it is a very compact (short) lathe, with a large 7.5hp motor, metric threading without having to unbolt gears, and a HUGE spindle-hole. Loads of them also had taper turning (as this one does). They aren't really great lathes like a DSG or Hardinge, but for "home use", especially in a limited footprint, they are pretty hard to beat.

I got this cheap with a known "clutch issue" and was sure it was the clutch rollers given the early serial number (they used needle bearings, later changed to solid rollers), which is actually a very easy fix, *IF* this is the only thing wrong.
Unfortunately, it looked a lot worse when I opened it up, so it's been a long time in repairing... I've actually bought and sold two other lathes while having this one, I bought it five years ago, and have rebuilt the headstock and re-commissioned it in the past few months.

Unfortunately, there was more than just the clutch rollers, hence it took a good few months on and off...
I also had another issue that is all too common with these lathes; the input sheave (pulley) coming loose, something I thought was due to it only having one woodruff key fitted (yes, really), but realised later that it is just a crappy design! This is a pic I borrowed off a unit recently selling on eBay, mine looked very similar to this:

Fortunately, the shaft itself was made something like 1.08" diameter, so these are easy to repair by (tig) welding up the keyways, and turning the shaft down to 1".
This was what the finished repair was like:

I used a taper-lock bushing to mount the pulley in place on the shaft, the SD-1 size worked perfectly. I am running a temporary sheave right now, because the factory sheave didn't have enough stock to machine for the taper-lock, so will soon machine another taper-lock sheave down to use as a "hub" for the original pulley as aftermarket pulleys have the belts spaced too far apart...

But the biggest nastiness was in the headstock itself.
Despite these lathes running a pressure-fed lube system from a tank in the base under the headstock, they never fitted a filter in there, and the suction for the pump was approx 5/16" above the bottom of the tank, so all the junk was easily "re-distributed"...

This is a pic I (again) borrowed off eBay, but is pretty typical for what they look like inside:

These pics are from the inside of mine after a very brief cleanup with WD40 to get the worst of the crap off..:

Below you can see the clutch rollers that collapsed. Also note the bearing race on the top-right; all dark and dirty instead of clean and shiny. Because one of the rollers had probably failed before the others failed and rendered it inoperative, the clutch fork was also beyond repair due the the clutch sleeve being canted over at an angle.

This pic below shows the other major failure: The compound (cluster) gear on the middle-left sits on a metal-backed bushing that had failed and dissolved. This had left the shaft getting chewed up - this gear is the final High/low drive the the spindle. The gear had been used this way for a while (must have made a heck of a noise) and had chewed up the previously machine-ground shaft.
I took the shaft to an engine re-conditioner, who put it on a crank grinder and took the min off until it cleaned up (12 thou). I sourced a good used gear, pulled out the bushings, then machined two oilite bushings to replace the standard bushings, loctited them into place, then bored out the ID of the two on the Bridgeport leaving 1.5 thou of running clearance - a little on the high side, but will have a good opportunity to get oil into there

To rebuild this, I basically stripped the whole headstock down, including the spindle. Every bearing as replaced with SKF bearings after trawling ebay for NOS bearings, luckily the spindle bearings looked great, so these went back together as they were. Every geartooth was checked, and cleaned, occasionally de-burred and polished (parts for these are sooo expensive, so is a question of make-do instead of replace unless it is "worn"...

Lots, and lots, and lots of cleaning followed, as well as changing all the seals and o-rings.
I got all the parts from GPS, who were REALLY cheap, and very knowledgeable. [url]www.gpsengineering.co.uk[/url]

All said and done, these are the finished article:

I also added in a filter so the headstock will only get clean oil (see above image):
 

I haven't painted the outside of the headstock, because that would leave everything else looking even more dirty! I personally prefer machines that look "used" so you don't need to worry about oil stains (its a colly so it leaks oil like everything else made in the UK in the 70's) LOL

Lots of little things still to do, but it is operational - AND (for a colly) very quiet, even at 2000 rpm!!!
There are no vibrations like the "made-in-taiwan" colchester 15" at my workplace has. All feeds, speed and threading work, haven't checked the taper-turning yet, but sure it'll be just fine.

I scored an Aloris CXA tool post and holders at an auction a while ago, and have collected 15", 12", 8" faceplates, 10" six-jaw chuck, 4-jaw, centres, MT4 drills and have been collecting other various tooling over the past 10 years, so this will likely be covered in swarf in a short space of time!

Finally, having done all this work, I now have been asked to re-commision another colly... Fortunately, the headstock is in MUCH better shape, so this should be pretty easy, but I'll still replace a lot of bearings, and all the seals.

TD