Greg G. wrote in message
...
Harry Sanders said:

At last! I finally got the spur center loose last night after several
days effort. Prior to last night I had tried several treatments with
penetrating oil (3-in-1 oil and WD40) along with a number of hard
whacks on the drift rod with a steel mallet. I had also tried putting
tape around the spur center and turning it with vice scripts to unlock
it. No luck here either.
It appeared that I was going to tear up the outer rim of the spur
center before it gave way.

Last night I started with a cooling-heating treatment using a hair
dryer to heat the spindle and a bag of ice around the spur center to
cool it. After about 10 minutes of this treatment, a hard hit on the
drift rod moved the spur center enough that the drift rod could no
longer reach the spur center but the spur center was still stuck. At
this point I tried the split nut approach. The nut did exert pressure
on the spur center but I had a problem with the nut spreading and
sliding up over the spur center. After the split nut treatment, I
searched and found a long steel rod to use in place of the drift rod
and one hard blow knocked the spur center out. I must admit I was
beginning to have some doubts if I was ever going to free this sucker
up.

Thanks to you guys for all the ideas. They were certainly a great help
in solving this problem.

Good that you got it out, I've never heard of one that was THAT
tight... Thermal expansion and contraction is a time honored method
of assembling and disassembling machinery parts. And the best part
is, no mangled, scored up parts to deal with from trying to force
something.

I guess Leif can save his ice for better things, like soaking his
battered hands from the pipe wrench... ;-)


Greg G.

Hey! Come on now guys! If I had realized that you were still having
problems with the sucker, I had a couple of other aces up my sleeve. First,
though! Did you try the pipe wrench? You mentioned visegrips, but they
wouldn't be strong enough. All you needed was a an 18 or 24 inch pipe
wrench and a ten to twenty foot length (*G*) of galvanized pipe to slip
over the handle of the wrench and you could have rotated your shop and
perhaps the world. I forgot to mention that I now use an old bicycle inner
tube to protect the spur drive collar instead of tape. The rubber really
grips it.

Now to the causes and conditions of the matter. What caused such a stubborn
issue in the first place? I read on this newsgroup that this type of
sticking is due to not keeping the morse taper clean. Since that time, I
have had no problem with sticking drive centers. Get a metal gun bore
cleaner brush and some solvent and clean that puppy up. Both sides: head
stock and tail stock and also the drive centers themselves!

Leif