Carolina bandsaw fixin up

[Barncat]

I bought a Carolina at auction, it was described as running and functioning as it should. The down feed cylinder didn’t work, it was missing a guard, the on/off switch didn’t work, the cord was cut, and the gearbox leaked. I guess whoever consigned it to the auction house had a different idea of running and functioning normally than I do. So I made a guard easily enough with the vise and a piece of tin. The switch and cord were easily fixed. The downfeed took some looking around to find a replacement, I bought a cheap air cylinder and new needle valve. I filled the air cylinder with air tool oil, assuming it was meant for air seals, so maybe it would play nice with the seals in the cylinder. I tried just using air, but I think it was too compressible, the saw lowered too fast, not at all, or was bouncy. It works great with the oil in it though. The brackets to attach the cylinder were just bent with a vise and 3 pound hammer as quickly as I could just to see if the cylinder was going to work. I took out the leaking shaft seal from the gear box and measured it up. The shaft measured .748, which made me think of 19mm and a metric seal, but the seal OD didn’t even come close to any usual metric measurement. So I bought a redi-sleeve that was meant for .748-.752 and installed that just in case my .748 shaft was going to be too small for a .750 ID seal. I wish the OD of the seal was a couple thousand bigger, but I think it is a tight enough fit to seal. After it was all back together I saw why it was leaking. The shaft wasn’t centered in the bore of the gearbox, it was noticeably lower than center. Hopefully the redi-sleeve will help take up some that off centeredness by making a tighter fit. Here are some pics, including the seal and sleeve part numbers in case anyone else needs to do this.