' 57 Noisy Clausing Colchester 13 Gear Noise :(

Inspecting large gears for wear is a pretty straightforward visual inspection. Straight cut gears are inherently noisy regardless.

I'd look at bearings first, though. Unless it's been heroically abused with no oil, it's far more likely it needs bearing attention than replacement gears. Worn bearings can make gear trains far noisier if they don't hold them in perfect mesh too.
The noise is from the last gears in the drive chain. They are on the idler shaft driving the main gears on the spindle. The spindle itself is tight, however the gears slide on the spindle. The idler shaft drive gear is a dual gear, that is a single piece with a gear at each end, the speed is dependant position of the gears on the spindle.
That to me means there is a bushing on the idler shaft and potential wear on the splines on the spindle shaft. I will try to measure those.
 
The spindle has single flat key.....Older Colchesters are pretty well known for gear noise,some much worse than others.....Basically,there is nothing you can do ,except to investigate if there isnt a resonating panel or something like that.......Also ,beware of thinking the gears are standard.....they look a like 10DP,but arent......They have "faked" the pitch circles to get the ratios they wanted.......One other point is the very early lathes have finer pitch gears throughout ,so be careful if you buy spares .....And never let the oil level get low,the rear Gamet spindle bearing will seize.......In fact the rear spindle bearing is always the first to go,due to the heavy spring loading.
 
Thank you all for the input. A follow up observation: The lathe makes significantly less noise in reverse. This leads me to the conclusion that the noise is not due to alignment or bushings/bearings but actually to worn gears.
The good news is the spindle bearings appear to be in very good shape.
 
Can you turn the gears around so they're running on the other faces running forwards?
 
Can you turn the gears around so they're running on the other faces running forwards?
Wow. That is a fantastic idea. It is the main high low final output pairs that are making the most noise. They are both solid and mirror images of each other. I will look into truning the pair around. That would entail removing the idler shaft and the main spindle. Otherwise it should work. That should extend the life of the machine significantliy.
 
I cant see the spindle gears being a problem.....they are big gears,and would wear much slower than the small ones ......the middle shaft gears wear both sides of the tooth ,and the back shaft gears are quite small...........one thing I noticed is that some of the gears wernt meshing fully,the detent needed adjusting .....but before that can be done,the wear ridge needs to be removed .....I used a stone,but a small file should be OK..............an odd thing about Colchester gears is they are not very hard,despite being induction hardened.
 
I do not understand what you mean by 'detent'. These are sliding gears, not like a normal auto transmission. I observe the sliding interface alignment is correct, that is the gears line up. However the mesh is less than complete, there seems to be excessive space. It is like the shafts are slightly too far apart.
I had thought that in forward all the gears only wore only on one side. I will check that.
Finally there are definitely ware small ridges. I can feel them with a small metal tool like a screwdriver blade. Is your suggestion to file the ridges off? That would be best done if they were removed. Removing the middle shaft should not be too much of a problem. It would be interesting to revove that shaft and file the ridges to see if there were a significant noise reduction.
Do you have a suggestion on removal?
 
EDIT....earlier version with cast iron levers is a bit different.....The detents are spring loaded balls in the casting,near the pivot points ....the lever have round notches to locate the shifter forks (back shaft)...or is it the other way round?......anyway,if there are ridges in the gears,it means they arent completely aligned ......on the back shaft ,the sliding gear nearest the chuck is usually out of alignment one way or the other.........(next ,check this info ,my memory aint what it was).......to get the intermediate shaft out ,knock out the tapered pin in one of the gears ,extract one of the bushes from the casting(it has a screw hole for extraction),and then use the shaft to knock out the opposite bushing...if necessary.
 
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