I own a G4003G and I'm happy with my purchase. I'm in the G4003 fan club and I have tricked mine out with a kick ass DroPro's EL400 DRO are you with me so far? Yes the 'gunsmith' version of this lathe gets some nice upgrades like the D1-5 cam lock vs the more puny cam lock on the G4003. Worth the added cost I say yes.
Now lets get to the flaws so you are not surprised if you purchase this lathe. This lathe is CHINA so go into it with your eyes open. That means CHINA QCTP and holders, CHINA paint job, CHINA assembly, and CHINA quality in some areas. In no particular order...
1. The stand is too tall unless you are 6'6" and too shallow, it will not inspire confidence in terms of tipping over, more so if you install leveling pads which makes it even shallower. I'd bolt it down if I were in an earth quake zone. I'm going to have to build a shorter more stable stand for mine.
2. The paint job was average, I had to finish painting the stands and the paint job on the lathe is sub-par in areas with flaking.
3. Assembly in some areas was poor, I had to re-drill and tap the motor mounts because the motor was positioned too far towards the tailstock to align the motor pulley with the spindle pulley. The factory just hung the motor pulley half off the motor shaft instead of fixing the problem.
4. The motor pulley was so horribly machined it wobbled on the motor shaft in cartoon like fashion. Grizzly sent me a replacement pulley that runs dead nuts true so problem solved but this does speak to quality of assembly and component quality.
5. The motor was installed so visibly crooked I question the QC inspection. In the picture below you can see that I have fixed the issues and mounted the motor square and parallel.
6. The head stock oil drain plug is located in a retarded position guaranteed to make draining the oil a mess.
7. The area where the bolts hold the gap in the ways down is a chip magnet, I fashioned a stainless sheet metal cover for that area to ease cleanup.
That about covers my annoyances with the lathe, it has performed well with no issues. I did spend some time eliminating vibration from the spindle due to the V belts. Mind you made in USA Napa V belts were no better than the factory V belts. I switched to linked belts for a nice improvement. So if you go this route just plan on having to address some quality and assembly issues. I feel for the money it was still a good value and have purchased enough CHINA machines to know what I would be getting into. I don't know anything about the PM lathe but took a look, I was hoping it had a lower RPM for threading but both lathes are 70 RPM's.