This evening I decided to get this job finished ...

The new bearings

But first a couple of little jobs ... This is the dial lock screw ... or was as it's now snapped off and well stuck. First it was milled flat and drilled out.

It didn't work out too well, this bolt was hard and presented a bit of a tough job. But out it came all the same. Trouble is the threads were not to clever by the time I'd finished.
The original threads were 1/4 26tpi. That's the same pitch as 6mm metric but around 0.25mm bigger in dia.
So I tapped it 7mm with the same pitch .....


Will need to make a thumbscrew to match ...
If you can imagine the now 7mm screw pushing the straight part, this in turn pushes the button which is pressed against the inside of the dial indicator. The two 45 deg angles allow a 90 deg direction change.

Hopefully this image will help to get a grasp of the workings.

The other job was to re-make the spring loaded brass plunger that provides a constant friction against the dial gauge.

The original didn't have a boss for the spring but I thought it might help with assembly


And here we are all back together

It was re-fitted back on the crosslide and all seems to be working fine now, the horrendous backlash has now gone ....

The handwheel is in a bad way, but it's functional for now until I can source some material to re-make it.