Harbor Freight X2 head tear down.

[spaceballs_3000]

Well I did a tear down of my X2 head, and found some surprising things.

1. Motor gear attached to motor shaft didn't have a retaining clip.
2. Almost every nut bolt (except the 4 bolts that connects the head half's together) was not really even hand tight.
3. Gears inside the head are plastic, I'm sure it not news to everyone else, but it did surprised me. I figured it would only have the one plastic gear on top.

To reduce head weight I removed all internal gears and High/Low level, Z hand crank & Dial, also counter balance spring.

Install of belt drive kit was easy, though I glad i didn't run my mill for long with so many screws loose from the manuf, as something bad would bound to happen.

[Gary55Ford]

The co. I work for just bought A 7x10 benchtop lathe for our shop, I was cleaning all the grease of of it and noticed side play in the crossfeed slide. I took the whole machine apart and found= all gib screws in both axis only hand tight, no grease or lube on any gears, I had to put a .012 shim in feed hand crank wheel to take out slop. And all of the thread cutting gears are plastic so I don't know how long they will last. Other than that it looks like a pretty good lathe for $370.00 dollars.

[bilinghm]

On my Grizzly 9X20, there is a plastic break-in gear that is to be replaced with a steel gear after a reasonable period of run in. All other gears are sreel. So the mini lathes are now all plastic gears? Not good.

Originally Posted by Gary55Ford The co. I work for just bought A 7x10 benchtop lathe for our shop, I was cleaning all the grease of of it and noticed side play in the crossfeed slide. I took the whole machine apart and found= all gib screws in both axis only hand tight, no grease or lube on any gears, I had to put a .012 shim in feed hand crank wheel to take out slop. And all of the thread cutting gears are plastic so I don't know how long they will last. Other than that it looks like a pretty good lathe for $370.00 dollars.