Giving a GH600 and Oil Leak

[BC ProfParticipant @bcprof]

It's been 3years and one month since second GH600 arrived , ( the First one fell over in the delivery van 30 miles form its destination )

Gave the headstock and gearbox an oil change after a couple of weeks after reading horror stories of what was in the oil. Mine came out clean with no nasties . Fat forward to this week . Changed the Headstock and Gearbox oils again. ( Who though it was a good idea to cover the headstock drain plug with the fastening for the splash back ??)

Having read the posts of others who had oil leaks ( Mine had none ) I have now discovered why . The dark brown ???? Very very slowly dripped out of the apron . The brown mark is still on the sight glass. The apron now has new oil and a leak !!

Brian

[BC ProfParticipant @bcprof]

[Grindstone CowboyParticipant @grindstonecowboy]

Ooh, nasty!

Rob

[SamsarandaParticipant @samsaranda]

Oil leaks seem to be a thing with Warco geared headstock lathes, I have a BV 20 and if I fill the headstock more than halfway up the sight glass then oil seems to work its way out I suspect from the spindle seals but it’s difficult to find precisely where, good luck trying to sort your leak. Dave W

[DiogenesIIParticipant @diogenesii]

The apron sight-glass seal could be, er, 'sub-optimal' – the one on mine looked suspiciously like an offcut of hard pvc pipe, from there the oil spreads down the apron, along the bottom of the front and drips off the 'h/stock end' corner..

..satisfactorily cured substantially slowed-down with an O ring.

Wouldn't surprise me to find that your brown blob is a residual artefact from the factory rather than a current problem, if the clean oil followed it out..

..It's not Soy sauce is it?

[JourneymanParticipant @journeyman]

The sight glass on my WM250 leaked and on inspection seemed to be held in by some form of putty. Scraped around the sight glass about 2mm deep, gave it a wipe with some meths. Applied clear silicone sealant to fill the groove smoothed with wet finger and this is still working fine with no leakage a few years on.

John

[AdrianRParticipant @adrianr18614]

I have a BH600, when I got it second hand it had a leak from the right sight glass, after an oil change it leaked from the rear. No, I had not swapped the glasses around, and both o-rings were new.

I now work on the principle that the leak means I won't have to change half the oil and the gearbox now has a slow feed of oil.

[BC ProfParticipant @bcprof]

I tried to flush out the ????? with paraffin, not wanting to use any other solvent that could affect the sight "glass". No result . I don't intend spending time stripping out the apron . As Mike from SRS said when I last spoke to him , "We have more decades behind us than in front " I will just content myself with a lathe that works very well with a tray that won't go rusty!

Brian

[Author]

Posts