Draining Gearhead Oil - Jet 1340 Lathe

You're going to make a mess the first time.
Get a pipe nipple and cap that you can thread into the headstock.
Either drain the oil and then add the nipple or you can try adding the nipple to direct the oil to a container
 
You may be able to reach inside and plug the drain inside the headstock with a small plug before undoing the drain on the outside.


Steve Shannon, P.E.
 
The 5 gallon bucket might just work, I have a similar set up for my media blast cabinet to clear out the dust as I blast.
 
That bucket idea is one that several people, over the years, has told me of using. Never tried it myself.
The drain is possibly a straight metric thread. No taper to it. If you have metric capacity on the lathe you could make whatever nipple needed.
 
tertiaryjim said:
That bucket idea is one that several people, over the years, has told me of using. Never tried it myself.
The drain is possibly a straight metric thread. No taper to it. If you have metric capacity on the lathe you could make whatever nipple needed.
Click to expand...
If it is a pipe thread, it is likely a British straight pipe thread; the metric countries have a metric pipe thread, but is seems that they rarely use it, rather, they use the British (inch based ) thread instead.
 
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Here is how one guy did it, I just bought a "new to me" ENCO 111-1450 and need to change oil soon so found this on youtube.

There is a lot of fiddling around in this video before the guy gets to what one might term, the pertinent info, that is about the 10 minute point so you might want to "jump" to that part to see what he did that was cool.

He used aluminum tape to build a little trough then tape it under the drain plug so it directed the oil out to a plastic tub. Seemed to work well until he got tired of holding the tub, switched to a plastic cup and it over flowed for a nice mess...

If I were to do it this way, I'd get a scrap section of PVC pipe, I have plenty, then make the trough so it is taped to the PVC pipe then tape that under the drain plug. Oil flows into trough, into tube, out far enough so my catch tub can simply sat on the floor in front of the lathe.

Before removing the drain plug be sure the contraption is all supported to I can remove the drain plug and walk away and let it drain for an hour or more.

It might help to start up the lathe and let it run a while to heat up the oil? I would also get a large magnet and place it in the bottom of the gearbox, but before that I would use my strong pickup magnet to dredge the bottom of the gearbox for any possible metal bits resting there, this of course would apply if you remove your gear box cover.

Bob
 
For the first oil change I highly recommend taking the top cover off and using a wet shop vac with a length of 1/4 to 3/8 hose adapted to the vac nozzle. It really takes the headache out of oil changes!
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Not only will this allow you to get all the oil out but also pick up any guck or sand or ?? that may be sitting on the bottom. With the cover off you can inspect the gear box for gear alignment and anything loose or unusual. While the gear box is dry, you can modify the drain plug to make things easier to drain for next time along the lines mentioned above. Since my oil changes are few and far between I prefer to use the shop vac approach every time so I can do a visual inspection.

BTW this same shop vac is kept near the lathe (set up for wet) so I can use it to collect chips in tight spots in and around the chuck (instead of using compressed air).
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Used a bottle hooked up to a vacuum source to suck out the oil from a Paxton supercharger. Works great.
 
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