Hello,
Back story: I have had a 1960's Colchester Dominion 13x36 for several years and as long as I have had it it has sometimes jumped out of powerfeed. Over time it got a bit worse, I knew I had to look into it though time wasn't really available and I knew I was going to move the lathe. So the lathe is in its new location and the other week it started popping out of powerfeed more than I wanted to deal with.
Problem: So I took the powerfeed shaft out of the lathe and dropped out the sliding mechanism that does the powerfeed. The flaw in the design is that the powerfeed shaft turns all the time and when powerfeed is not in use the shifter mechanism (where the issue is) hangs from it and gravity pulls it enough that the feed shaft slowly has eaten the CI hole to be oval. See attached Image IMAG0067 to see oval of shaft hole and IMAGE0070 for where it is located on the lathe and how it just hangs there.
Proposed Solution: I figured I will bore a larger hole (boring head on mill) located where the original should be and then create a bushing to relocate the shaft.
Question(s):
1. What's the thoughts on bushing material for this? I would obviously prefer to wear the bushing (can always make another) vs the feed shaft so I was thinking bronze.
2. I have having trouble in figuring out a way to mount the casting on the mill to align and bore the hole.
Currently I have created a temp shaft with key way and used some shims to force the outer face of the gear against the inner face of the casting which should be the preferred location. Then I used the temp shaft in the gear to locate the hole location, see IMAG0074. But there are no good reference locations to use to mount the item on the mill table and I have am having a tough time getting the shaft to be X & Y perpendicular to the table.
I am trying to add pictures of this so bare with me as this is also my first post to the forum.
Any thoughts welcome on how to proceed as I really miss my lathe powerfeed

And until I fix it I also don't have threading capability as my gear box is apart to get the powerfeed shaft out.
Pictures: 0069 shows shifter out of lathe. 0070 shows location on lathe at bottom of carriage, 0067 shows empty oval holes, 0074 shows my current setup to determine hole location, 0076 shows the oval around the temp shaft
Thanks, jeff