I started to clean up the K & T
I looked at the table, saddle and gearbox and found that the oil passages where a mess. It looked like someone had use old engine oil to lube the ways.
The passages the let the cutting fluid drain back to the base was full of old cuttings. The pic to the left is one of four drains. All where this way. The table comes off pretty easy. The two ends of the table come off and the table will slide off leaving the screw on the saddle. I loosened way adjustment and slid out the wedge. The table is heavy. Very heavy. I used an engine hoist to lift it and two eye bolts and two t nuts. |
All the parts went in the parts washer. This when I found out the last paint job on the mill was crap. It is falling off in the parts washer.
To the right is the table. It is sitting on two metal saw horses. The way keys for the table and two saddles can be seen sitting on the top. All of the ways have galling. It is not bad but for dam sure not good. I figured that I would finish digging into the mill. Next step pull the saddle... To pull the saddle the front gearbox has to come off. Thus the speed control has to be pulled. This is where I screwed up. I started on removing the gearbox before disconnecting the the rear controls, the shield, and feed stops. The photos bellow have captions of how to remove the parts. |
The first thing to do is to remove the drain shield. It is a piece of sheet metal with four (4) screws. Do not pull the gear box till you do this.
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These two shafts are under the drain pan on the left. The tapered pins go up to remove. This allows the gear box to slide out. If you don't do this the gear box comes out 2 to 3 inches and then it will not go back in...
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Before I pulled the gear box I pulled apart the speed control. I though it was binding on that side. You do not have to pull this to remove the gear box but you do need to put it in the lowest gear.
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You do not have to remove the handles or the auto feed selectors. I used two long bolts as guides and two for sling mount/supports. If you lock the saddle, you can use the the screw to run out the gearbox. The balance point is just on the inside of the gearbox. The mating face of the gearbox. I used two more bolts as the gearbox slide out to hook a sling to it. Seen hanging it worked very well. If you are worried about it dropping get some pipe and weld some D rings to it but when I did this, I did not have a problem.
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With the gearbox removed, the saddle slide right off. The rigging of straps and chains is not the best way of doing this. It worked and allowed me to get on to the lift. This is when I found out about how bad the oil passages were. This had been worked on before. I found pipe cleaners in place of the wicks. Some of these were pushed in to were I am not sure oil could not get by. I replaced all the wicks after cleaning all the passages. To do this, I found the old drill holes from when it was make. I found the past holes drilled through the holes in plugs where the last guy rebuilt this. I drilled out the old plug completely. In place of old plug I used Allen plugs. I pull what looks like a pump out and cleaned it too.
Going back together, I used pipe cleaners and wicks twisted together. The thought is this: in 30 years the next poor bastard that has to pull this apart... F him. But in case I have to go and fix something I could do it easily. |
To the left is a group of photos I pop when my hands were not covered in some of the oldest black oil I have ever seen. Any of the parts I could get into the parts washer got cleaned. The parts cleaner even pulled off the bad coat of paint. The first coat acted like wet chalk. After washing off the cleaner this wet chalk hardens. With everything apart, I painted it as much as I could. I did have some issues getting it back together. Getting the speed transmission lined up was a pain. I ended up using white grease to figure out where the pins needed to be to fit into the shifting grooves. When I pulled the knee plug and the oil that came out of this could have been installed 1943. It had a sulfur smell and I could smell it. The plug has a screen that was covered, and I am sure the oil was flowing over top of the screen. The next step, I filled the knee with diesel and ran it for about 15 minutes. The sight gauges showed that I had the pumps working. I drained the diesel and was surprised how much crap came out. This is when I found out the Phase-O-Matic was crap. After opening it and looking at it, I found that the magic blue smoke had escaped. In steps a Mr. VFD. I have it installed and spun up just the motor. I still have the drain plug out getting the last of the diesel out. Programing the VFD and making a box for it is where I am at. The K&T is now making cuts! WOW |