Home visits by ex Myford Engineers

[silverfox]

IIRC there was athread on here about two ex Myford guys who visit to restore myfords that have gone 'slughtly out of phase'
Play in the cross and top slide. that sort of thing

Cant find it anywhere,

So Is there anybody on here can shed any light on them?

[rrmrd66]

Hi Silverfox

This is from November 2015:

[e-mail]
mailto:[e-mail]

They ( there are two of them) are ex Myford, based in Nottingham, but only worked Saturdays and charged top wac' for mileage.

Caveat emptor.

Good Luck

Malcolm

[silverfox]

Thanks, I have sent a mail

[Cro]

May 7, 2018 19:06:47 GMT silverfox said:

Thanks, I have sent a mail

Be interested to know the outcome of this 

Adam 

[92220]

I would be too.

Bob.

[rrmrd66]

Afternoon everybody.

I never took it any further.

I got the feeling I was going to spend about £300-£400+ to get two guys to come all the way to North Yorkshire, fit some felt wipers and tell me my spindle bearings were shot, which I knew.

I was lucky as I had been given my Myford ML7, Circa 1950, for free. I put that on e bay and a guy from Cork paid what I thought was an exceedingly fair amount for it so I put that towards a fully reconditioned Super7 with variable speed drive. Basically a brand new lathe.

I am more than pleased with this. It is a delight to use.

Go see Mr Dickinson (senior) at Mytholmroyd. He will sort you out.

Usual disclaimer.

Cheers

Malcolm

[silverfox]

Bob and Adam

Had a reply from Darren

The service ( plus i expect parts if reqd, is £300) addtl cost is the fuel for the return trip from Nottingham

The Good lady has given me the OK!!

Just to say what i am having problems with on mine ,and have tried to rectify without 100% success, is to eliminate the play in the cross slide and topslide handles and to get them moving a bit more smoothly .Plus i think the headstock bearings needs a bit of adjustment. I have followed the instructions in various places ,but just seem to be that 'smidgen' out at the finish. The old girl could do with a bit of a makeover as a present!

[Cro]

That's not too bad, please keep us posted when the job is done. Mine could do with similar upgrades to the slides and a few minor jobs hence the interest.

Adam

[silverfox]

Adam

On reading my midnight post!! i may have made an error with the parenthesis as it does read a bit ambiguous

So it should have read without the brackets

Service £300.00...plus any parts...plus fuel

hope that makes sense now

Ron

[rrmrd66]

Hello Ron

Yes, you can see why I fought shy on this.

200 mile round trip, for me, @ £0.45/mile (I think), plus parts, plus service charge @ £300. It soon adds up.

If these guys are still offering the service they must be of some good??

Incidentally, if there are any Harrison lathe owners up here, int' North, I can recommend the following ex Harrison fitter who was recommended by Harrison's service department.

Leeside Lathes
Contact - Ian Maltas
Mob - 07946 142 966

He is excellent, even if he basically told me my free gift Harrison M300 was a bag of nails. ( Yes. I know another "free" lathe, but not when you take into account the 3 phase/single phase conversion and transport 35 miles up the A1 which was a task in itself, but I can recommend removal experts if anybody is interested.)

He has all the right precision kit to give your lathe a full going over. I would imagine that he would consider other makes as well.

However let us all know how you get on.

Good luck

Malcolm

[silverfox]

Malcolm

Thanks, and i appreciate your input.But i would rather pay a little bit more for someone who knows the lathes, rather than a chap who is a 'jobbing' engineer ( and no offence meant by that)
That is why my Car goes to chaps who worked at Crewe or did apprenticeships at recognised dealers, than a garage/ Allfrauds or a bloke who had a two week course at some Far Eastern manufacturer that offers servicing for 99.00.

It is the old adage

Bill for repairing said article

for using hammer to rectify fault 5.00

knowing where to hit 95.00

Quality is remembered long after the price has been forgotten

I have seen some horror stories under models like mine where a thick quick fitter jacks it up on what they think is the correct point, only to completely wreck a bracing web and then do the same on the other side, I have always stood by the chap with a jack and watch where he sticks it.If not on the approved jacking, he is shown exactly where. And if he needs to jack up on theside i carry blocks that are cut out to fit around where he needs to jack ( tip from the owners club!)

[92220]

I have just had Das and Pete, the 2 ex-Myford engineers, to service my Super 7. They have just done a brilliant job!! Including the petrol cost, they charged £360.00 all in and were here from 9.00am until 2.30pm and didn't have a break except when we were all nattering over a cup of tea. I think it was a very reasonable charge considering all the small niggles have gone from the lathe and it is operating like a new lathe. They sorted the bearings, the clutch, the loose backgear, and stripped the saddle, cross-slide, top-slide and lubricated and adjusted all the clearances to factory settings. Had it been necessary (which it wasn't) they would also have re-scraped the front bronze headstock bearing.

As far as Silverfox's problem with the bearings is concerned, that was one of my problems. Unfortunately if you try to reset the bearings using the handbook as reference, you will never manage it correctly!! Apparently the method quoted in the manual just doesn't work, and the factory fitters had their own method which does work.

Bob.

[silverfox]

Bob

What did you think of the 'stories'

As you said, it is like having a new lathe



Ron

[92220]

Hi Ron.

I'm not sure which 'stories' you are referring, but they are a VERY chatty pair! Most of their stories were about the old Myford company. Some of the stories make you wonder quite how the company lasted so long, and it had nothing to do with the lathes!! Interestingly though, I hadn't realised that Myfords are being made once again, though not in the numbers that used to be made. Looking on their new website pages, they seem to have an infinitely variable speed machine but no details of the system. Possibly Varispeed pulleys. The other more interesting point was that they are fully British made, I think in Yorkshire!

Bob.

[uuu]

Details on this page:

New Myford lathe

Looks like there's the same belt drive and backgear as before, albeit with only two ratios on the secondary belt, coupled to a VFD/inverter to vary the motor speed.

Wilf

[silverfox]

Bob

Yes they are the ones. It also made me wonder how they ran it!

[Rob]

I'm sure it's excellent quality, but is it just me that thinks £10,000 for something as small as a Myford is just a bit too much?

I know the quality is lacking in Chinese lathes, but they're perfectly capable and you pay a third of the price for a lathe three times bigger, with modern features like a DRO.

[timb]

Jan 13, 2019 11:05:55 GMT Rob said:

I'm sure it's excellent quality, but is it just me that thinks £10,000 for something as small as a Myford is just a bit too much?

I know what you are saying about price, but this is for a brand new lathe with varispeed and stand, the basic price for a new Cowells ME90 is £2700 plus VAT (£3240) and that is a lathe a quarter the size and no chuck.  I guess you get what you pay for and buy what you can afford at the end of the day.  ML7's are pretty cheap second hand and you can get a selection of attachments with them if you are lucky.  The ex Myford guys charge about £300 plus travel to do a service so you can get an in spec ML7 for less than £1000.

Just my thoughts....

Tim

[Rob]

Jan 13, 2019 13:29:56 GMT timb said:

I know what you are saying about price, but this is for a brand new lathe with varispeed and stand, the basic price for a new Cowells ME90 is £2700 plus VAT (£3240) and that is a lathe a quarter the size and no chuck.  I guess you get what you pay for and buy what you can afford at the end of the day.  ML7's are pretty cheap second hand and you can get a selection of attachments with them if you are lucky.  The ex Myford guys charge about £300 plus travel to do a service so you can get an in spec ML7 for less than £1000.

Just my thoughts....

Tim

I hadn't heard of the Cowells ME90 before Tim, that to me is even worse value for money. I bought a brand new 12" (I think it goes up to about 18" with the gap removed) swing, 36" between centres Chinese gear head lathe with stand, chucks, faceplate, work light, coolant pump, DRO etc. for the same price. As I mentioned, the fit and finish and the quality isn't anywhere near as good on the non-precision bits, but that has nothing to do with its ability to produce accurate work.

I had an ML7 for about 5 years before I upgraded to the Chinese one. I'd never want to go back.

[92220]

Yes £10k is a bit steep!!! I wonder how many they will sell at that price. Mind you, if you look on Home and Workshop, they have a secondhand Super7B Plus Big Bore lathe for sale at £7k, so maybe £10k isn't so 'out of this world'....not that I would pay that.

Bob.