Brought a Lathe

[P51Mustang]

I have been wanting a lathe for a long time and I just brought an old Atlas for what seems to be a fair price around here. It is a Model Number H54 (10" swing with 36" between centers). I am guessing that it was made just before or just after WWII. It needs a good clean up and a bit of TLC but seems pretty solid. The bearings/bushings in the head stock seem tight, gears look pretty good, the ways seem in pretty good shape and it was pretty quiet when running. It came with 3 and 4 jaw chucks, a couple of different size drill chucks, a live center, change gears and a small amount of tooling. I am sure that I will find some things that need to be repaired but it does seem to be a good starting point (for sure the back plate of the gear box cover is missing and there are issues with lead screw reverser box).

 

[2oolhound]

You should have wheeled it outside for photos. These photos are too contrasty. I have the Atlas QC54 which is similar. I don't use it everyday but I'd hate to be without it.

 

[P51Mustang]

I took the photos at the guy's place where I brought it. The lighting was not that great. I will try to get some better shots of it in my shop.

 

[The Cobbler]

You'll probably find it amazing how many projects you'll find the lathe useful for

enjoy it !

 

[BombShelter]

Congratulations on your new arrival! I'm a sucker for Atlas/Clausing Equipment since the 80's when I used to deliver office supplies to the factory on Pitcher Street, right across the street from the Checker Taxi Plant.

I've got the Craftsman 618 and an Atlas Disc/Belt Sander (I use this a lot) in my collection, someday I might add more.

 

[P51Mustang]

Here are a couple of better photos of the lathe. If anyone is interested, in the background is my about 70% done 1965 Mustang wide body road race car project. The car will be used for time trials, open track events and SCCA CP class autocross. The car is pretty much a complete custom build. I am hoping that I can use the lathe to help make some special custom pieces I need such as bushings, spacers and who knows what else.

As I said in my first post on the lathe, there are issues with the power lead screw reverser box (not that uncommon I am finding). I played around with the lathe today and the lead screw does work in one direction (it pulls the carriage toward the headstock, which would be the best way to have it run I would think). There is no way to reverse it. Doing some research, the box should have three gears (a gear on the input shaft, a gear on the lead screw, an idler gear that is at 90° to the other two gears and is always in contact with the other gears), a sliding dog clutch and a lever/clutch fork assembly to move the clutch to engage one main gear or the other to control the direction. The idler gear and the lever/fork are missing in my box and it looks like someone has shimmed the input gear over so that the slider is locked into both gears so the lead screw is direct dive in one direction. I am thinking that I just leave it this way for now so I can get some use out of the lathe (most of what I think that I will need to do for the car will most likely be hand work or I can use the power feed in one direction, no cutting of threads). There are parts out there to fix this but they are not cheap it looks like. Anyone who has experience with this or has any comments or ideas let me know.

 

[P51Mustang]

BombShelter,

Thanks for your comments. I had heard that the Atlas lathes were nice units and I was happy to find this one even with the reverser issue. The rest of the machine is solid and it should do what I want. At some point I may even give it a paint job.

 

[nadogail]

May you enjoy your "New to you lathe'' and good health for many years.

 

[SweetD]

Very cool lathe and car project, good luck with both!

 

[P51Mustang]

Thanks!

 

[tombell572]

Looks like you've got the original cast iron legs, wood base and shelf--nice!

 

[P51Mustang]

Thanks!

It does have what I think are the original legs, wood base and shelf (the base has a nice beveled edge on it). The wood looks well preserved by 70 plus years of oil. It may have the original motor on it also as it has an Atlas name plate on it (could have been rebuilt a time or two). I was a bit surprised with how narrow the base is but it seems pretty stable, even with how the motor and drive pulleys hang off the back of the headstock.

 

[Tomstir]

Dude!!! Those flares!!!! I need more info.....always wanted to do that......works better on a coupe in my opinion!!! Sweet!!

 

[LopezBart]

I had the Atlas 10" lathe w/ a quick change box for many years. Easy to use machines, definitely light duty. The gears are mostly Zamac die castings. I made a steam engine on mine that powered a 19' boat. I now have a much heavier and larger lathe, but I sometimes miss the "feel" of the Atlas; it was really easy to make small delicate parts with that machine.

 

[bb29510]

i got an atlas, hasnt been touch in 43 years

 

[genog]

I have been wanting a lathe for a long time and I just brought an old Atlas for what seems to be a fair price around here.

Congrats

 

[P51Mustang]

Dude!!! Those flares!!!! I need more info.....always wanted to do that......works better on a coupe in my opinion!!! Sweet!!

OK, the Mustang project is a 1965 coupe that I picked up to build into a road race/autocross car. I have been doing autocross, open track and some time trials for close to 30 years in an 84 Mustang. I have always wanted an early Mustang track car and I picked this one up to turn into my race car (call it a retirement gift to myself as I finally retired after 40 plus years as a design engineer last year). I have always liked the wide body 65/66 Mustangs race cars like the attached 65 Shelby look alike car, so for my car I wanted a wide body also. I also wanted what I will call the classic look wide body like the attached car. I called Maier Racing out in California and got a full front and rear set of their fiberglass 65/66 race flares (the molds for my flares were pulled from an earlier, somewhat smaller tire version of the white car in the photo). I decided to use the current GT-1/Trans Am tire and wheel package of 14" wide front tires and 14.5" wide tires. Well I found out that the Maier rear flares were not big enough for the 28" tall, 14.5" wide tires (I order my flares a sometime back when the tires were a bit smaller), so I decided to make my own handmade metal rear flares that are somewhat styled after the Maier flares. The Maier flares are more cut away in the front and rear than what I made as I was thinking that more of a full flare when be a bit more aerodynamic than the cut away flare (like a 65 Mustang is aerodynamic). Well, a couple of things have changed since I did the rear metal flares. First, after needing to load the car in and out of my trailer a couple of times, I decided that the car was too wide for its own good (the car had ended up so wide that I only had about 1" or so clearance a side between the tire side walls and the trailer fenders). I knew that this would be the case but I did not know how big of a pain in the rear this was going to be until I had loaded the car in and out of the trailer. I looked at what could be done to move the tires in and found that in the rear, the only way to get really do this would be to move the rear frame rails in (I had already put in mini tubs in the rear). Moving the frame rails could be done but it would be a big pain and it would make the car illegal to run in the SCCA C Prepared autocross class (in CP almost anything goes but moving the rear frames is not allowed). I decided to change the car to run square (same tires and wheel front and rear). This let me reduce the width so that I will have about 2.5" of clearance a side. I am only giving up about 1/2" of tire width and will have a lot less issues living with the car. This is why there are green tape lines on the rear flares in the photos as the flares are too wide now and I plan on cutting them back. I am also thinking that with the narrower track width that I may go back to the more cut away classic flare look, which shows in a green tape line in a one of the photos. I may find that the flares will be too big with the smaller tires (it will depend on how they look), if this ends up being the case, I may cut off the steel flares and go with the Maier rear flares which should fit now. I am hoping this is not the case as it would be a pain to have to redo all the work I have in the rear flares. Another nice extra for going with the smaller, shorter tires is that it will save me a large amount of work with having to notch the bottom of the rear frame rails for rear axle clearance at the ride height I want to run. It has been a lot of work to make a 60 year old car work with today's rubber.

The car will also have a one piece tilting fiberglass nose on it. I can dig up some nose photos and maybe a short video of the nose tilting (if the video would fit here) if anyone is interested. If there is eough interest I could also make a bit of a build thread showing other things done to car like suspension and and other structural mods.

 

[alfadan]

Not too familiar with the Atlas lathes, but I thought the reverse position was used to get the correct direction on power crossfeed for facing and such. Not super important, but nice to have.

 

[P51Mustang]

I believe that your understanding is correct. Right now with the way my power lead screw is rigged up, it would work fairly well to turn the diameter of a part but the power cross feed is not in the correct direction. A bit of a pain but not impossible to work with as I can run the cross feed by hand. I am guessing that I will fix the reverser box at sometime but for now it should work for making some spacers, bushings and such for my race car project.

 

[ching0n]

I missed on a 48" 8" swing atlas w/a quick change for $300 because i didn't want to get up early.

 

[P51Mustang]

Sounds like it could have been a heck of a deal at that price.

 

[ching0n]

Sounds like it could have been a heck of a deal at that price.

no tooling or chucks, or accessories (except saddle and tailstock) just a face plate and what looked like decent motor. It was a 10" swing though (TH48) with power feed and cross feed so definitely a good price around these parts.