There is ALWAYS a way. I believe what Grizzly meant was that there was no
built-in way for THEM to upgrade your lathe or send you parts to upgrade it
yourself. As far as you upgrading it or getting someone else to upgrade it
is just a matter of time, money and ingenuity.

A larger motor is going to give you even more problems with clearance. It'll
stick out even further into your turning space IF you can even get another
motor to fit into their assembly. I'd be making another frame but making
it longer so that the motor that fits into it will be further away from the
headstock and much lower. So low, in fact, that as you swivel the headstock
the motor will actually move under the bed ways. You'll have to have a
longer belt and be limited a little in how much you can swivel the headstock
because you'll be limited by the belt hitting the bed ways as you do swivel.

You could also move the new motor out and up (instead of down as I describe
above) to gain clearance and not have the swivel movement problem. However,
you'd get terrible vibration with so much weight (of the motor) out and up
so far. More vibration that you already get with that lathe.

- Andrew


snipped
Getting a new lathe really isnt that much of a problem. It really bothers
me
that I can't find a way to upgrade my Grizzly to a better motor. I have
written to Grizzly about my delima, and their response was rather
negative:
"There is nothing you can do to upgrade the G5979". So I ask all of you
that
are familiar with this lathe and all of the others that are identical to
it.
Do you agree with Grizzly's response? Do you know of any way to retrofit a
slightly larger motor, that can be reversed?
Either AC, or DC. I know some single phase AC motors can run in reverse.
DC
is a no brainer. Any ideas out there? Has anyone modified this lathe
before?

Ideas are appreciated

Thanks in advanced

Leslie Gossett