I'm breaking in my lathe and noticed a small amount of oil leaking out of the headstock around the cam lock plate. I tightened up the 4 bolts on the plate that surrounds the cam lock.
First time with a lathe so I’m wondering if others have experienced the same thing? And is what I did the proper fix? Will call tech support in the morning.
I have a significant leak I hope is only the sight glass. Level in head stock is droping. I do not see any other leaks from seals , waiting for parts. Hoping its not a porous casting. Tech support said not to add tracer dye.
Mine is definitely not from the sight glass. It is around the cam lock piece. I have tightened up the 4 bolts and 1 was a little loose. Not much but I snugged it up non the less.
Am still running it and the "leak" has appeared to stop. Will wait and keep an eye on it. Pretty interested in talking with the tech reps. what time do they start taking calls?
Have you started cutting anything yet? I’m still learning the machine and waiting on a few things to come in. Learned anything about the machine you’d care to share?
Finish your break in and recheck the leak. If there is a problem Grizzly will stand behind their product 100%. They probably won’t be back in office until Wednesday at the earliest.
Got my answer. Nice fella on the phone said it appears as though the maker may not have put enough thread locker on the bolts. And this was letting some fluid pass by. So he recommended taking the bolts out. Clean the holes with mineral spirits/alcohol. And use thread locker to secure them back in place. About , edited away. I did not use this much torque on mine. I only used 132 in/lb
On the new way they are shipped. Yep due to damage from carriers they are all shipped not on the base. So you will have to assemble them when you get them. This is fine by me. Better to do a little work. Than send it back due to damage from the carrier.
Do not tighten your bolts to 150in/lb! I just did that and here is what happened.
I removed all of the oil from the headstock after break in. Once the oil was drained I removed 2 of the bolts from the cam lock plate. Well I cleaned the holes with mineral spirits as recommended. Let everything dry and put some blue thread lock on the bolts. I then put them in and just cinched them down. Did the same to the other 2 bolts. Once all 4 were ready to go I began tightening them in a criss cross pattern.
Well the top 2 began free spinning. I started getting mad at myself pretty fast. Thinking this is just great something is busted. Well I take out the bolts. Cleaned the holes with a Q-tip and yep pieces of threads come out also. Well I noticed the bolts looked short. From the underside of the bolt head to the tip measured .783". While the bolts used to hold the cover for the top of the headstock measured .9805" I may not be to smart but figured longer is better. So put some lock tight on them and put the long ones in. Cinched everything down to 132in/lb.
I'll use the short ones for the cover plate. Just posting this so in case someone else is tempted to tighten theirs first contact the tech rep. Then check the length of the bolts. By the way the bolts are still too short to protrude into the inside of the headstock by about 3/16" or so in the thinnest area.
So am I the only one to have problems with this? By the way when I did tighten them up I noticed there was a gap in the gasket previously that closed up nicely when tightened. So I hope this solves my problem.
Another update for those following this thread. I called Grizzly Tech support this morning. Very helpful guy on the phone, I told him everything that went on. He looked it up and sure enough the screws that hold the spindle gasket cover plate in place are 17mm. And the ones for the Headstock cover plate are 25mm. He understood exactly what I was talking about. He is sending me some more screws that are just a little longer than 25mm. I don't remember right now how long. But if they are to long at least I can cut them down some. And yes covered under warranty. He was going to bring this up to the powers at the company. Just one of those things that may have been not thought out enough.
Also mentioned to him about the steady and follower rest arms. They don't retract far enough in. I chucked a piece of 1/2" aluminum rod last night. The arms were in the way of even this small piece of stock. He began looking at the parts and commented yep they don't pull in far enough. I mentioned that I plan on cutting mine down on both the threaded shank and the back side of the arm itself so they can retract in farther.
As has been mentioned before Grizzly is listening. He said they have meetings that discuss what customers have brought up. It is always nice to see a company who truly cares about the customer.
So Anyway thanks to Mr. Shiraz and his employees for not only putting out a fine product, but also listening to feedback from the customers.
