Hands down, this has to be the BEST video on RU-vid that shows what this process is really like from the "user" perspective. I'll be tackling this job myself, hopefully fairly soon, as it's getting to the point where I really dread even turning on my mill due to the racket.
Great video, I have just purchased a Bridgeport series 1 2HP like yours, the bearings had all been done and a new belt fitted but the shims were never replaced, so it is a little bit noisy, although fairly smooth. Now I can attack the job of replacing the shims with confidence. Once I find them in the UK
I wish I saw your video before I rebuilt my mill, it would have saved me a ton of time. I could not find any information on how to adjust the variable speed plate so I did the same thing you did with a tachometer. All of the other videos say, "do not remove the bolt".
Like a dumb ass, I had the motor and head vertical and stood on two ladders and the table. When I finished, I realized I should have rotated the head 90 degrees so I could reach the parts better. Oh well, live and learn.
Ok, wow, I REALLY need to stop procrastinating and do this myself. Mine is an unholy racket at anything under 1000 RPM. hearing the difference this made for you just seals it.
Its worth doing. A couple hundred dollars and a few hours but every time I turn the machine on it makes me happy to hear it purring away like its supposed to
@@spankranchgarage Yeah, I’ll be calling H&W right after the holidays. It’s gotten so that every time i turn mine on it’s more of a “wince and pucker” on my end... hahaha
Speed Selector makes variable speed pulleys that replace the Reeves, Hi-Lo, TB Woods and Lovejoy pulleys that went out of business or got bought. Most of the pulleys are in stock or Speed Selector will custom make if needed. They have an actual engineering department who were very helpful.
Great video man, was wondering if you measured the spindle runout after the rebuild? Been reading that after replacing the bearings you should regrind the spindle taper. Been wondering if a regrind is necessary or if the spindle will still be in spec without a regrind after replacing the bearings.
I didn't. I didn't change my spindle bearings, I only rebuilt the top end in this video as my bearings are still nice and quiet. For the work I do, some spindle runout isnt too impactful. But I have seen some interesting videos of how people are grinding their spindles. Looks very doable in the home shop
@@spankranchgarage Thank you for the reply. I'll have to check out some of those spindle regrind setups. I definitely need to rebuild my top end and you made it look easy/did a nice job. Do you happen to have a tenths indicator to measure your runout? Nervous about rebuilding mine and curious if your rebuild effected the runout even though it was a top end build only.
I think you might want to try to refloat the head on your Bridgeport. I noticed some rubbing sounds when you were getting up there in RPM, similar to the ones I ran into when refloating the head on my mill. I made a quick video of it just to demonstrate what the head is supposed to sound like. I didn't have any references while working on it so I wanted to share what I learned.
I checked out your video. Your machine looks great! What did you mean by balancing? Like a real dynamic balance of the components? And yes I will play with this head more. I get a certain noise only when the head is cold. It goes away once it warms up and isnt existant in the summer (My shop has no AC)
@@spankranchgarage Okay that's good to hear. Yeah, all of the components in the head from the bearing cap on top to the spindle are aligned and not causing vibrations from being off-centered. It took a lot of attempts to get my machine balanced. It's very finicky because you are trying to balance both a spindle and a transmission all at the same time. So any little bit of runout will cause some kind of noise and vibration.
I would suspect it’s a back gear or back gear belt issue. You can see those parts in this video. Unfortunately you have to tear it down pretty far to get to these
For the main column casting I used a wire brush on a grinder. There is paint and body filler on these castings and its very time consuming and messy to remove. For the head components, the OEM paint was in much better shape. I just touched up spots that were flaking with sandpaper then painted over the OEM paint.
