One thing I have done to a couple of Taiwan lathes,is get rid of those cheap looking sheet metal cursers for the dials. I made up new ones with long,tapered,hollow ground(sort of) very thin needle tips,rather than those fat inked marks. It's easier to split thousandths with a nice,fine tipped needle to look at,which is no thicker on the ends than the width of the markings on the dials. Make them nice and close to the surfaces of the dials to eliminate parallax,and to not get anything caught on them. I have never caught anything(like clothing or a rag,on mine,yet,they do not actually touch the dials and scratch them.
Another thing I do is get rid of the too hard to move springs under the dials. I drill and tap a hole in each dial,and make a knurled knob. When the knob is loosened,the dials rotate effortlessly to reset to zero,etc,without nudging the crossfeed or compound feed screws.