B-port clone rebuild

The machine is a bit of a mishmash. The j-head is an exact copy of a Bridgeport pulley drive head, the tables are the same, but the body and column are totally different.
 
SPARE PARTS!!!!
$180, 30 minute drive, good chat with a very nice fellow with 1 leg.
He had a Bridgeport quill and head he bought 10 years ago for one reason or another. Reduced the price for me quite a bit, and tried to give some of my cash back once I got there, I refused. Looks like the power feed is intact and working. The missing parts are parts I have and are in better shape, but the missing clutch and broken gears are all here in this replacement. I'm thrilled!

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The story with this head is, it was picked up by a scrap guy. He was just going to scrap it. Then the guy I bought it off took it off his hands.
Boggles the mind how there's guys out there who couldn't care less about something when it could be so critical to someone who needs it.
 
These spindle bearings might be good, too. I just took the spindle out. The bearings were frozen, but I flooded them with oil and freed them up. They are a little noisy in my hand, but not crunchy with no detents. I assume the noise is from all the crud in them. I'll clean them all up and see how they are. I might have a spare pair of bearings too! Or I can send them to someone in need.
 
I have been able to harvest a shmorgishborg of very healthy parts from that Bridgeport head. The gears were PACKED in very gooey, smelly, grease. But thank goodness, cause they would have been rusty and seized if not. I'll clean everything up soon and start getting it all installed on mine.
I considered cleaning up the Bridgeport head itself and using it instead of my clone, but, that seems like a lot of work. But time will tell. Then I'd really have a frankenmachine on my hands.
 
Devcon metal epoxy can fill in that vise, get some jaws and you will have a very ugly but functional vise.

Nice work getting her cleaned up. Very glad you looked for spare parts.
 
doesnt appear to be a "bridreport clone" more like an early "jet round column mill drill or clone . what make is it??, and I hate to hurt your feelings but for 1400+ id say you got " hosed" I had a "clapped out one simular and was glad to get 200$ for it !!
looks like you bought your self a real learning experence I hope you can source parts to get it up and running. ,keep posting your hard work
 
It's a First mill. There's lots of them.
And yes, considering the condition, I got hosed. I'm aware. And yes, a learning experience. It's running now. It runs really quite well. It's not actually as worn out as it appeared. There was just a lot of broken parts in the head. Like I said before, someone crashed the quill power feed, either more than a few times, or once really really hard. Like, walked away from boring a hole for a half hour and came back to find the thing exploded. Then a mechanic just scrap most of the parts.
 
gaston said:
doesnt appear to be a "bridreport clone" more like an early "jet round column mill drill or clone . what make is it??, and I hate to hurt your feelings but for 1400+ id say you got " hosed" I had a "clapped out one simular and was glad to get 200$ for it !!
looks like you bought your self a real learning experence I hope you can source parts to get it up and running. ,keep posting your hard work
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You know, your words kind of stuck with me for the past few days. I hadn’t actually considered myself hosed at any point. I did talk the guy down $200 and I felt I had a decent machine. I knew from the start that I was going to rebuild the machine. How else do you learn and familiarize yourself with something better than tearing it down and rebuilding it.
Even when my wife got upset with me cause I needed to buy tooling to build tooling to fabricate replacement parts because it was too expensive to buy them.
Even when I said myself that I was sold a lemon.
I still hadn’t considered myself ripped off.
I saved up the money, I drove 3 hours to buy this machine. I brought it home, and now it’s mine. No matter what condition it was in, it was MY machine now.
I guess I just didn’t look at it from the outside or from a purchase standpoint. I took immediate ownership of this machine and made it my own. And now, it runs great, I have the parts to fix the power feed, I have many plans to improve the machine, add other power feeds, build tooling, and I will likely own this thing forever.
I guess, as they say, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Am I crazy? Likely. Aren’t we all tho? We picked an incredibly expensive, time consuming, and ridiculous hobby!
My wife reads... that’s what she likes to do. Sit, and read. Library books, in fact. Doesn’t cost us a dime. Me on the other hand, well... we don’t talk about that.
 
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