Index Super 55 NOTE: posted in gen mach forum already

[I.RonMann]

So I got ahold of my mill, (MILLie) Brought her home in a tiny U-Haul trailer. You never realize how bad roads are until you haul a 1200-1500lb top heavy chunk of machinery down them. The machine did slide a tad from center. ANYway she is going through preliminary clean up and inspection, so far so good! rust was film and no pitting as yet. ONCE I determine it needs no major parts replacement or repair, we will clean the paint up and run all the movements again under power, and with measurement. Any fails and we will do a complete and total teardown/rebuild, instead of pulling major components for clean up. If she passes, we will run each movement under scrutiny. So far, not bad for scrap price...

 

[jmhoying]

That's a good looking machine! It cleaned up a lot better than mine. I see that your indicator dials cleaned up nicely, as did mine. After I had mine nice and shiny, I clear-coated them.
My knee-raising handle was broken off also. Luckily, I had all the parts and had a local welder braze it together.

I picked up my Index Super 55 a few weeks ago and it looks identical to yours. Most that I've seen have round hand-wheels. I'm thinking of replacing the left table feed handle with a larger diameter hand-wheel with a nice rotating knob to hold onto.
I've run mine from a VFD a couple times, but will have a rotary phase convertor in place later this week.

Jack
Fort Loramie, Ohio

 

[Ulma Doctor]

nice score on the mill!!
looking good!!