Well, the Victor has landed! Picked it up yesterday and got it unloaded in the late afternoon....6 hours of driving total, so not too bad. When I got there I was thrilled to see that the seller found more than what was in the auction pictures. He found the steady rest, spindle sleeve, metric change gears, an 8" 3-jaw chuck, a live center, lantern tool post, MT4 adapter, bed clamp for the taper attachment and some tools/tool holders and a stack of vibration absorbing pads (steel on one side, dense rubber on the other).
After unloading I generally looked it over, confirmed the voltage configuration on the motor and put power to it. All of the speeds/feeds/functions work as they should, the ways look fantastic and the dials/handles all have very little backlash. It sounds quiet, the brake works and overall I'm pretty thrilled! It does need new drive belts as the originals are pretty rough.
I quickly cleaned and mounted the 3-Jaw chuck which is marked Victor made in Japan, threw a 1" ground rod in it and a put a tenths indicator on it....002" runout. I rotated the ground rod 120 degrees and checked again and it was more like .0015" runout. This is a direct-mount chuck with no adjustability, so I'm pretty impressed with it.
I gave it 30-45 minutes worth of cleaning and found something surprising....the factory plastic covers were still on all the dial faces! Oil got behind the plastic so they looked weird...pulled off the plastic, wiped down the dials and they're cleaning up beautifully. I still have hours worth of cleaning ahead of me, and I plan to drain/refill the headstock, but that's all easy. First thing is to fit the Aloris CXA I have for it, do a quick level and try a few cuts to see what I'm working with.
The owner was there when I picked it up...super nice older gentleman who had a couple of barns full of steam powered stuff. He said his friend owned a Massey Ferguson dealership and bought this lathe new. He would use it there from time to time, and loved it, so when the dealer retired, he bought the lathe and it's been in his shop ever since making parts for his steam projects. It's marked 1976. I'll need to find a follow rest and hopefully a micrometer carriage stop, but I should be able to use it pretty much today if needed. Fingers crossed it performs like I suspect it will.
With just a bit of cleaning:
