Hello,
New to this site but I want to mention I have G0768 and the best item about the lathe itself is the tailstock, it has a lock handle instead of the wrench and bolt design. Of course it comes with all of the basic items Grizzly always provides with their lathes. Do I wish I had purchased a 10" lathe? Yes I do, I also wish I had the money for the 10" lathe. I did have one issue with the lathe so far. I like to make pens and I ran across a good deal on some pattern welded round stock and while drilling the thru hole for the pen barrel the lathe could not do it. I don't know if it is because the metal had the nickel alloy in it or not. But it got about 1.5" in and the drill started to wander up and that was that, end of drilling. Fortunately I was able to finish the drilling at work on a clausing 12x40 lathe. I have not really used it much since then. My only other complaint? Speed and feed. The slowest feed on it goes pretty fast for my liking. I wish I could slow the feed down by at least half of what it is now. I also had a hard time with the pattern welded steel getting a good finish and that was with new carbide insert tooling (not Grizzlys) on the tools. They were centered properly for height. Is it better than the 7x14? Most definitely. I have not tried any threading on it yet because I have the Clausing at work and I don't have to mess with change gears there. I know, just where is enough enough? I would say if you can go with the 10" model but if you can't I don't think the 8" will cause to much disappointment.
PatrickB.
p.s. get the PM machine if you can, I think they are built a bit better.