Starting The Refurbishment Of My 1947 South Bend 9a

Tony, If you get a HF one HP motor you will probably have to do some mods to the electrical connection box to get some clearance for the drive belt. At least I did on my 9A.
I bought one while I was repairing my old 1/4 HP GE motor and had to re-route some of the electrical to clear the flat belt. The old GE is back on and chugging along, hopefully for a while longer. It is a lot quieter and smoother than the HF motor.
 
Yeah. I hear you. I have enough experience with HF tools to be wary. They are great when you need something RIGHT NOW and don't need it as an inheritance for your kids, if you take my meaning. I have been watching ebay for a good buy on a Baldor. By the look of things, I should be ok on clearance with a 1/2 or 3/4hp motor. Thanks for the heads-up, though.
 
I just ordered a 3/4hp motor from Grizzly. I know they're Taiwanese, but I've had good luck with their tools and never had a motor give me trouble. We'll see what happens.
 
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I'm glad you got a new motor ordered. I found the motor I have too late you had already ordered.
It's a Marathon 1/2 HP, I can use it for a project in the future.

I believe you'll be happy with more power. Like some one already said the flat belt on my lathe will slip off if I get carried away

My HF motor isn't noisy it makes less noise then the others. I know HF tools are all over the place in quality.
But if you read the reviews and are careful you'll do Ok.
 
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As far as Asian tools go, the Tai stuff generally seems to be of better quality than the Chinese, but even the Chinese stuff has come a long way in the past few years, although it seems their steel and cast iron lacks the quality of our old USA stuff. Still, my judgment was based on experience with Grizzly tools, I have a full stock of cabinet shop power tools from Grizzly - table saws, shapers, jointers, etc - and have never had a motor give me any trouble, so that's why I decided to give this motor a try. We'll see how it fits and works in a couple weeks and I'll report back.
 
Well I am a little late to this thread but my 1941 south bend 9" came with a 1/2 hp 3 phase motor and if you have never thought of using a 3 ph motor they are great. with my set up teco vfd and 3ph motor I now have infinite speed control. now I need more 3 ph for the rest of my machines .
 
I'll second bisley with the 3/4 HP 3P + VFD. I did that with my 9A, and love it. Variable speed and direction change with a flip of a switch or turn of a pot.

Also, Didn't see a direct answer on your counter shaft casting. Mine is a single pulley, but is also cast aluminum. Pretty sure yours is just fine and original.
 
Thanks for that confirmation. I have seen a number of images on Google that look just like my wheel, so I guess I'm fine. I'm going to either have to turn my countershaft down on the end or bore it out to 7/8" though. Looks like one of the countershaft bearings is galled and will have to be bored and bushed, so I figure I'll bore the wheel out to 7/8" while I'm at it.
 
Ok. Some pics of my headstock bearing and spindle. Of course, the photos make things look worse than they are. I can barely feel the marks on the spindle with my fingernail. I intend to polish it a little with some extra-fine emery cloth and call it good. As for the bearing surface, however, I can definitely feel the groovesl. It needs to be smoothed. Will a brake cylinder hone do the trick? Anybody tried that?

Second question. The right-hand side bearing of the countershaft frame, or whatever it's called, is galled and scored inside. It's going to need to be bored and bushed. I have seen a manual that indicates later-model 9A lathes had these bushed with two bronze bushings on each side, such that an oil reservoir was created between the bushings, rather than using wicks. Hard to explain. Anyway, with that setup, would there be a need for the felt wicks? I'm considering boring out the bearings on both sides to the depth of the keyway and simply pressing in oilite bushings on each side (actually two bushings per side) and just doing without the wicks. Has anybody done this? Opinions?

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Well, so far, the consensus on the "other" forum is that my headstock spindle and bearing aren't really bad enough to worry about. I'll just touch up the burs in the headstock bearing bore and call it good.

As for the countershaft bearing bores, the jury is still out, but I think I'm just going to do the same thing. From what I'm being told, oilite bushings will not stand up well to the side loads imposed on the countershaft, so if I bore/bush the bearing I'll have to order bushings for it (I have the oilite ones). I have replaced the countershaft with a 7/8" TGP 1045 shaft, so that should take up some of the excess clearance. I guess if it's still passing oil too fast through the bearing I can always bore and bush it later. For now I'll just go with it like it is.
 
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