Lifting up her skirt

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Batmanacw

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How hard is it to pull the apron on an old lathe? My Mulliner and Enlund has rubbing gears and I would like to pull the apron and see what is up.

I am guessing the lead screw and drive rod will need to come out. Do they come out without disturbing the quick change gear box or am I going to have to disassemble a lot of stuff?
 
That is going to be hard to answer without seeing it up close or at least close up pics of the area involved.

Tailstock end is most likely just a bracket of sorts, headstock could be anything.

You may be able to remove the tailstock end and slide the whole works off from that end.
 
Never heard of that brand, but it's pretty simple on a SB.
Just found this pic.

Looks similar, detach and remove leadscrew and feed-rod bearings at tailstock end. Detach apron from carriage (on SB it's just two screws through the top of the carriage) and slide the apron down to tailstock end and off.

1716052411730.png

In this pic it looks like 4 screws holding the apron.
1716052741318.png
 
Problem is the gears stick up beyond the top of the Apron, so you can't just unbolt the slide from the Apron and move it a side.
Pulling the lead screw and the feed rod is the best way to go and with a machine of that age you won't know what you find until you tell us about it.
Many times it is better to go big on disaassembly i.e. pull the compound, then cross slide.
Pull the feed rod, lead screw their support bracket at the tailstock end. The Apron then the saddle.
You can have parts that are manageable, not only in weight but your ability to balance. Your going to want to clean out the lube passages.
Sometimes taking a very old machine apart you miss something like a pin or bolt, then you have heavy parts starting to move and putting stress on alignment dowels or other features, all of a sudden you go from another disassemble to oh **** how do I support this and get some bolts back in.
You are going to touch it all any way wash it,
stone it and inspect it, do what you have to and reassemble it.
 
Some use tapered pins on the head stock end, should be pretty easy to spot. Drive out from the small end. Mike
 
Okay. I learned a ton today.

The knob in the carriage handwheel is the clutch for the carriage power feed.

The knob in the middle is the power feed for the cross slide. That clutch was very, very stuck.....

The grinding was from the carriage feed clutch not fully disengaging. I had to pull the clutch knob off and the handwheel and clean it all up and get lots of oil onto everything.

The cross slide clutch needed some tapping with a plastic hammer and working back and forth and it finally released. Then I pulled it and cleaned everything.

Now the carriage moves super smooth with no gear noise. No need to pull the apron now.
 
Batmanacw said:
Okay. I learned a ton today.

The knob in the carriage handwheel is the clutch for the carriage power feed.

The knob in the middle is the power feed for the cross slide. That clutch was very, very stuck.....

The grinding was from the carriage feed clutch not fully disengaging. I had to pull the clutch knob off and the handwheel and clean it all up and get lots of oil onto everything.

The cross slide clutch needed some tapping with a plastic hammer and working back and forth and it finally released. Then I pulled it and cleaned everything.

Now the carriage moves super smooth with no gear noise. No need to pull the apron now.
Click to expand...


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