Hey Briney,
Thanks for the advice. I got it working tonight and your advice helped a lot. I was trying to do it off the bed without the spindle installed and eyeballing where I felt the gears needed to be to engage...dumb, right? So I put it all back together and used the slot to rotate the eccentric until the back gears were fully engaged, which turned out to be off of where my eyeball point was, go figure! Once I did that and got the rack in, everything lined up and works great!
My next step is to get the belt back on the motor and adjust the variable speed belt to get it running again. I'm not looking forward to any of that, especially the variable drive system. After I get it all powered back up and running, my next step is to remove the static converter and install my VFD. It's gonna be a long road, but hopefully worth it.
I bought the machine from a guy who was just making bushings with it and really didn't know what he was doing. The lantern tool post he was using was missing parts and not even close to the center of the work. The cross slide and compound were so poorly adjusted they could be pushed back and forth by hand. Before I bought it I just did a simple cut on a scrap piece he had about six inches long and somehow the machine managed to hold very tight tolerance on that despite the poorly adjusted parts. So I decided to completely tear it down, clean it up, and put it back together. I'm glad I did, I found a gear in the quick change box with broken teeth, so I replaced it. Keeping my fingers crossed that it still cuts straight when I'm done with it!
Thanks again all!
Dave