One thing leads to another...

[Pete O]

Bit of an update, along with a confession- I abandoned the idea of stripping the machine down completely at this stage, for a couple of reasons- not least of which is that I just needed to get the machine running more than I needed to undertake a major rebuild project. So I decided on a basic cleanup and reassembly.
I took it down as far as the swivel table, cleaned everything out and re-assembled. I also completely dismantled the vertical head attachment, cleaned out all the 1960-era grease and reassembled it, adjusting bearing preload etc and repacking with fresh grease. There is quite a bit to that vertical attachment, must have cost a bomb back in the day.
Along with a new piston for the one-shot lube pump, I used 4mm nylon tubing to replace the crushed section. Direct hand pressure on a 5/8" diameter piston is not going to produce a lot of pressure so I'm sure it will be adequate.
I have actually started to use the machine , have been milling the two new crossfeed nuts that I threaded ages ago.
Having got the machine running, I'm confronted with a new problem which is that the main 3-phase contactor is bouncing and arcing on startup; I can start the machine in neutral but with a load (i.e. the gear train of the vertical attachment) the contactor will not hold. Whilst I've been milling the two crossfeed nuts for the lathe, the contactor has got worse and worse and now won't hold at all.
I have a few of the more modern contactors left over from the phase converter build, unfortunately the wiring to swap them over exceeds my knowledge of such things. So now I have two almost-finished feed nuts in the machine and look like waiting a week or more for a friend to come and swap the contactor out for me.