Thread: Broken drill press spring

Originally Posted by Tiger

The spring on my 12 speed ryobi drill press has broken, i believe the technical term is quill return spring. It sits under a 42 mm diameter cap. I've had problems getting parts from ryobi before, any advice or workarounds?

Is it possible to take the spring to a spring maker to see what they have, that might do the job. The only other alternative is to look at spare parts from say H&F to find something similar.
Kryn

Search for 'drill press spring' on ebay and find one that matches. There's at least 200 listings so you have a good chance of finding something close!

Thanks guys, MS you're correct, there are a whole lot on ebay but these things are under a lot of tension, anyone know how hard they are to get back into the cap housing?

Try and get one that's a good match and leave it in the cap. The whole assembly (spring and retaining cap) normally slide onto the slotted quill winder shaft. Once the nut is engaged but not fully tightened the cap is wound up to tension the spring, then snagged on the lug in the casting and held there while the retaining nut is tightened. Once tight, the nut keeps the cap engaged with the lug and maintains tension.

There's normally not a lot of room between the cap, spring, and quill winder shaft, so you need to get one very close to the original to make it work. If the cap and spring are too large, you can't really repack it into the original cap as there won't be enough clearance for it to work properly, conversely too small and the spring won't exert enough force.

You can try to contact Ryobi for the part number if you can supply the drill model number, then try and place a special order via Bunnings to get the part. This has worked for some parts for me, but failed on others (yard blower vac bag) which had been a Big B stock item but Ryobi had stopped supplying them. Some bits are easily obtained from US but almost impossible to get here.

Thanks Mal, have put an order through special orders at Bunnies, Ryobi owned by Techtronics and they're not answering calls so hope for the best.

Haven't got a lot of Ryobi gear, so haven't chased them often, but twice some years ago I have emailed their support system and had a reply within 24hrs. Just looked for the email ad on their site and can find an icon to 'ask a question' in the service section, but it links back to the page it is on.

However, you can access a service agent finder by putting your postcode into the system and searching. It gives a list of service agents , indicates what class of gear they work on, (petrol, generator, electrical) and their approximate distance from your postcode location. If you can id the model number they should be able to locate the part number and order it for you.