Buyer Beware

[JPigg55]

A few years back, I decided to get back into metalworking (not since High School Metal Shop). Like most, I perused the various forums looking for advice on what to buy and what to look for.
Getting the cart before the horse a little, I finally decided on and purchased a South Bend 9A lathe and Clausing 8520 mill. I went and picked up the lathe, but bought the mill sight unseen (part of an estate eBay sale was how it was listed in the description) due to the distance and had it shipped. They both went into storage until I put up a shop.
The shop is now mostly finished and I started moving in the machines. Lathe was no issue (except for loosing the coupling pin for the drive belt in transiant), but the mill.........
So far, I've had to replace the motor, rewire it, and replace the belts. Started to test run it and see how everything worked. Everything was going well until I tried to use the fine downfeed. It was working intermittently, so I tore into it only to find one of the compound gears (part# 990-066) was missing most of the teeth.
Somewhat lucky for me, I had ran across another complete 8520 head for sale on eBay and bought it (my research had shown some of the parts are hard/impossible to find). I had reasoned that I'd go ahead and buy it while one was available just in case.
Now the hard question. After almost 5 years of research, shopping, building, and set-up, I'm trying to decide on whether I should just swap out the heads/gear or tear it all the way down for a complete check/restoration (not completely sure I have the necessary skills and/or knowledge to do this). Part of me says "Do it right. Tear it all completely down, clean it all up, find any other issues and repair". Another part keeps saying "Just swap the gear/head and lets make some chips."
Decisions, decisions......

 

[davidh]

I was just confronted with a similar situation. . . . mine however was only a 48" snowblower attachment. after partial disassembly and finding the worm gear broken, and after pricing a replacement @ 360bucks or so plus total disassembly, I just found a decent used assembly and im in process of adding a few things. save the old stuff incase I get rich some day
i'd say change it and start using it. . . .

 

[Terrywerm]

I also have a Clausing 8520 and am quite familiar with the fine feed gears problem. Turns out it was a very common problem on these machines. Mine are stripped out also, but I plan to make new ones once I get my hands on either a rotary table with tailstock and indexing plates, or a dividing head. For most operations, you will not need the fine feed, and if you wish, you can always bring the table up to the work, using the knee to provide your fine feed. The head on these mills is quite simple, so taking it apart and fixing things up would most likely not be too difficult. You could just opt to replace only the fine feed gears too, which would be easier than swapping out the heads.

 

[JPigg55]

You could just opt to replace only the fine feed gears too, which would be easier than swapping out the heads.

Since the other head I have is a complete one, it would only be a matter of removing 4 hex head bolts to remove the one and bolt the other on.
The question for me comes down to the original head has more "Options", for lack of a better description. I'll take and post some pictures later, someone may be able to look at the differences and school me on some of them.

 

[toag]

I am also for swapping the heads out. I'd also keep the other head, maybe make some drawings of the worn out gears and maybe a member here can make a few. they would need a universal table horizontal, gear driven dividing head, and the right involute cutter.
I would love to try, would be an awesome project, i have the tooling...however my restoration of my horizontal is way, way behind.