One final step will be to lift the entire lathe on riser blocks as it is not possible to access the bottom motor fasteners when the lathe is mounted on the chip tray.G9972Z 11' x 26' Bench Lathe with Gearbox Another great starter metal lathe with more capacity than typical benchtop lathes! A belt change from low to high range or vice versa now takes about a minute with no skinned knuckles.

The 33' OEM belt is a rather tight fit which stresses the belt in the 1200 rpm position. With this modification, I will keep the 34' high range belt. One last task will be to modify a 17mm box wrench to lengthen the wrench the wrench to make it easier to access the locking nut in the tight space. To facilitate installing the idler, I cut a screwdriver slot on the end of the idler shaft. Now, to change from low range to high range, I just move the idler pulley to the second position, eliminating the need to assemble the fastening hardware in the cramped space on the back side of the bracket plate. To go several steps further, I made a second stud for mounting the bracket and drilled a second mounting hole 3.4' to the left of the right edge and 4.8' down from the top of the bracket plate. If I need to use one of the three higher speeds, I can swing the new bracket out of the way and reinstall the OEM bracket in the slot. Most of my machining is done with the three lowest speeds. The two holes were tapped for M10 x1.5mm. The second part was to make a longer idler bracket, increasing the center to center distance from 45mm to 70mm which increased the amount of adjustment available and better positioned the idler on the belt. My solution was to move the pivot point for the idler bracket to a position about 2.6' down from the top of the bracket plate and 2' from the diagonal edge of the plate.

The OEM idler is located in a diagonal slot above the belt and adjusting consists of loosening a nut on the back side of the bracket plate sliding the stud to an appropriate position and tightening the nut while maintaining tension on the belt and preventing the stud from moving in the slot. However, there is one particularly annoying shortcoming. My Grizzly G0602 lathe is generally a pleasure to use.

T slot bolt g0602