Restoring-ish a Mars Thor

**Gammaboy** · 21st November 2013, 09:49 AM

So, I got this Mars Thor for free. Can't turn down a free lathe!
It did come to me with some issues - it had been crashed under power feed at some point and bent the carriage pinion, and had been dissassembled by this guy's dad in the hunt for what was wrong with it. He'd passed on, and this bloke never got around to doing anything with it - in the meantime 2 of the spur gears inside the apron for the power crossfeed and the support for the power feed shafts at the tailstock end had been lost - I've figured out the tooth count for the 2 gears (plus a tooth count for some additional metric thread options) but it's of course a count that doesn't appear to be commercially available (I think it's something like a 21 tooth, and 20 and 22 tooth gears can be had). Can't remember the specs of the gears off the top of my head.
Anyway, I straightend the pinion and replaced the mangled woodruff keys, and have been trying to clean the old girl up a bit more - apart from some damage to the bed where something has thrashed around a bit, it's in pretty reasonable shape I guess.
Anyway - is this the usual colour for a Mars?
What do people usually re-paint their machinery with? Just aiming to tidy her up a bit more and start using her, and sort out the power feed support and the crossfeed gears.
Can anyone point me towards someone who can cut me a couple of gears for it? Through my work, I've worked with a bunch of cnc shops here in QLD, but i don't have any good "one man in a shed" type machinists up here - used to use Alan Pickstock a bit back in Adelaide.
Everyone loves pics - I posted these in the "What lathe do you have" thread, but figure they really belong in this thread. They're from before I straightened the pinion and refitted the apron.

**Ueee** · 21st November 2013, 10:18 AM

Hi gamma,
Welcome to the forum!

There are about 6 mars owners on the forum I think, I own a great scott/conrick.

I'm not sure on what colour they were, mine has been painted at some stage, but the colour under the ministry of munitions plaque is a really dark grey. Depending on the trouble you want to go to, an epoxy enamel is probably the easiest paint to use, something like rust guard. At the other end of the scale there are 2pac epoxies like dulux duramax. I have several machines done in rust guard and it holds up just fine.

I could probably cut the gears for you, I'm not sure what dp yours will be mine is mostly 14, but I think the apron gears are different.

Good luck and remember we love pics!

Cheers,
Ew

**Gammaboy** · 21st November 2013, 11:00 AM

Thanks Ew. I think the paint on it might be the original paint, but not convinced - not a huge fan of the grey/blue colour... but then again I did grow up with Hercus green...
I think the geartrain in the apron is 6DP? I've calculated an additional gear for cutting 1.25 and 2.5mm pitch metric threads (it came with the 64 tooth gear for cutting 0.75mm/1/1.5/2mm metric threads luckily), so that's on the list to hunt up aswell.
It's going to be a bit of a slow process - i've got a pile of Car and Bike related projects on the go too...

**Gammaboy** · 8th January 2014, 12:59 PM

So, still haven't gotten around to doing anything more significant on the Thor apart from some more cleaning - and I noticed while looking at picturess of other lathes that I've only got one oil feed cup for the spindle behind the chuck - there's a small port much like on the saddle at the change gear end, but I'm guessing that's a ways off what should be there - so my question is, where do I find a replacement?

I guess the other question is - what sort of oil to feed the spindle with?

**Gammaboy** · 8th January 2014, 01:20 PM

While I think of it - there's alot of backlash in the bronze nut for the crossfeed - it appears it was pinned and bolted originally however the pin has dissapeared - not sure that this has affected the amount of play, however it occurred to me that a way to take up the play in the nut would be to drill and tap the crossfeed a little further along, fit a grub screw and cock the nut a little off axis - so it would engage deeper on the top at one end, and the bottom at the other - is this done? or is it a bodge?

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