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Nope, not a "making something on a lathe" thread, but a "using the best bits from two lathes" sort of thing My 80+ year old Southbend lathe has served me well for many a year and all sorts of things have been made on it, but lately it has been suffering with belt slip problems and as you can see from the photo the bench it is on is starting to bend! My other lathe is/was a TW Monoturn which to put it politely is very worn! The base is good (apart from a crack in it) and the motor is very strong.. The rest is scrap really! Strip down of the Southbend to make it lighter to move about.. A chance to give it a good clean as well.. The TW Monoturn soon looked like this.. And eventually it was reduced to a pile of parts. Rather than use the lathe base/tray legs I will be using just the tray. The bench will be strengthened a huge amount to take the extra weight of the tray and bigger motor. This is only a mock-up so the big bits of box will go and the tray mounted level on the bench once I have cut a hole for the drain bit on the tray which is lower than the rest of the tray.. The lathe and tray look good together, a good time worn match

Found this and had to share it.

This is Gary (Minky) on his home built. Just before it got painted.Pulling well with only a 3.5hp engine.

Hi all couple of pictures of Kara and her scars after her operation

The plating instructions advise agitating the mix whilst plating with something like a fish tank aerator, I dont have one but I just happened to have a vibrating fret saw on the bench next to the tanks, I switched it on and it worked a treat just enough to jiggle all the bits in the tanks without shaking it all on to the floor.

Had a few hours in the shed today i just had to get out of the house. After sorting out some boxes of parts from the van I decided to clean my front weights and give them a coat of paint. Not much done but some ticks off my list

Just keep clear of any docks, canals or lakes.

It always helps when you are doing the work yourself and not having to rely on trade men finding the time. Its a good job i am a Jack of all trades.

Got the ceiling finished off today and cleaned it all out ready for some painting. Going tomorrow to get the wall and floor paint.

Got it all up and working now. First some photo's at start of play. Motor and pump piped up. Cylinder in place. As you can see things are a bit tight. In third gear the lever only just clears the cylinder end. Rear fulcrum. Couple of mods done to that before everything was connected up. I had the lift chain attached to the modified hitch at first. That would give plenty of depth, but little ground clearance when up. I then attached it to the slot hitch. That gave me an estimated depth of around 4" and 3-1/2 of ground clearance. Moving the shackle one link on the chain will give more depth but less clearance. I'll put the tractor on blocks and do some experimentation. Maybe fit a turn buckle.

I had a very similar TW Monoturn years ago which friend John and I found to be fairly accurate given its age. Bought as part of a job lot of machinery and tools by my old place of work. They didn't want it so it ended up in John's garage. Came with a large and heavy 1hp motor which we just clamped to an old kitchen chair and moved to tension the drive belt. A temporary arrangement that stayed temporary as things often do. Had quite a bit of use before being loaned to another friend who moved house and we lost touch with. Never did track him down.

Thanks mate Yeah right And so the engine troubles continue!! Even with a new carb and posh inlet manifold the engine would still not run right, and then I noticed a bubble! For what ever reason there was some liquid around one of the head bolts, and it was bubbling! Only one thing to do.. Yep, start pulling the head off to see if the head gasket had gone! As it turned out the head bolts were not as tight as they should of been and the head wasn't as flat as it shuld of been.. Hhhmm.. Plenty of carbon in there! The valves badly needed grinding back in as they didn't sit to well, also the stems were coated in carbon and crud so out they came for a clean and to be lapped in. With the engine back together it ran..... Just as badly as before! :banghead: It was then noticed that a lot of fumes were being blown out the oil breather which means piston ring problems! Hopefully the rings are just stuck rather then broken.. Time will tell.. Oh... And this turned up and a panel doner for Gut horse!

Thanks Charlie. You guessed right Koen, it is a Bing.. Hold fire on looking through your carb collection for now, a new carb has been ordered which should arrive today.. Hi James, I knew about the Renault engine, I didn't know the rest of a D250 was Gutbrod! The fender pan is hard work but it's getting there slowly. To see where the smaller dents are I had to strip off the red powder coating which wasn't much fun as it's hard stuff! I gave the back of the pan a quick coat of blue paint and gave it a light sanding back once it had dried.. The blue bits left are all low spots which need to be beaten out.. Slowly the blue bits are going as the pan gets straighter. This is the corner where the big kink was That's enough about the fender pan, now onto an inlet manifold for the new carb.. Lathe work has been interesting due to problems with both Nigel's and my lathes but we got there in the end.. Starting with a bit of pipe being cleaned up. The inside was bored out a bit so it would be a tight fit on the original manifold. Boring out the mounting flange. A taper was cut so the pipe could be firmly welded on. Like so Now that's a nice bead of weld Back on the lathe to turn the welds down and give a nice flat mounting surface.. A bit of trimming, cleaning, welding and painting later the carb bolts on It's a shame the carb has problems but a new one should be arriving today

Morning all, a small update for you.. Nigel and I have been having fun trying to get the engine running right. Were not there quite yet but certainly heading in the right direction. Changing the spark plug from a long reach to a short reach made a vast difference to the quality of the spark, we now have a stong health spark but we will be fitting an electronic ignition kit to make it 100% reliable.. Although we did kinda have the engine running on the original carb (video coming at some point this weekend), the carb is so worn with lots of play (and air leaks) in/around the spindles that the best name for it is junk! So out of interest we thought we would try a pit bike carb that Nigel had kicking about the place.. As we couldn't find any rubber pipe the right size for a temporary inlet manifold the rubber was removed from an old mower pedal and used The engine wanted to run but as the carb is a bit too small it was never going to work that well... So.. a correct size pit bike carb will be ordered and I will make a steel inlet fannymold.. I have slowly been beating the fender pan back into shape. It came from one of Karls racing mowers and as well as being battered during racing it gained a few extra holes... 61 holes in total! You know it's been hit hard when it has a 1 inch kink in it! Lot's of hammer work later it's looking straighter. And by the end of play yesterday, even straighter with the cracks and some of the smaller holes welded up.. It's hard going panel beating a rear fender pan as the steel is so thick, but I'm really enjoying it