new turner PM 45 ridden hard, put up wet

[anwalt]

Thanks for the replies. 

I had not captured the Owner's manual for the pm45.  That was a great help by describing how to adjust the drive belt. 

It turns out (not pun intended among turners) that the drive belt was riding on the inside of the belt.  Apparently that had been the situation for a long time.  I first managed to loosen the mechanical adjustment linkage with copious application of WD-40.  When the Reeves linkage loosened up I found that  the spindle would not turn faster than 800 because the belt was bottomed out. 

Adjustment of the drive belt, and loosened linkage solved the issue. 

thx for the responses.
Tom
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New to turning, e.g. I have not turned at all,  yet. 

Purchased a former high school Powermatic 45,  1971 edition.  Has the variable speed drive.  Drive seems to work well from 250 to 800rpm as indicated on the VS dial.  No reaction on moving the handle toward 2800rpm from 800rpmI. 

Hoping to not invest too much $ until I try turning to see if it is for me.  I spent a several hours on owwm.org before the purchase  deciding a pm45 was a solid machine.  More time spent looking for a quick fix for the drive issue.  While the users at owwm are great on complete rebuilds, quick fixes are not their specialty.  I would like to give turning a try before going nuts on a rebuild, although this machine may be worth the effort.

Open to/hoping for suggestions for quick fix to increase spindle speed above 800rpm. 

thx for replies,
tom

[MichaelMouse]

OK, been here?  http://www.vintagemachinery.org/pubs/655/15010.pdf

Not that you need rpm above 800, but   use the care and feeding for the Reeves drive as indicated.  IIRC, most selection problems come from the top end slipping.

http://www.vintagemachinery.org/pubs/det...px?id=1276

[DFJarvie]

Tear it apart and fix it up. You'll enjoy turning much better with a fully functional machine. Even if you decide you don't like turning you'll get your money back and then some with the rebuild.

[Rodneywt1180b]

Do a search at OWWM for Reeves Drive.  It could be sticky, it could be the wrong belt.  Could be something else.  The only way to know is to open it up.
I'm a member at OWWM too.  Usually when machines get rebuilt it's because they're apart anyway.  Better to just go through everything at once while it's apart.  It's not near as much fun to take a machine apart again later after you've been using it.
Rodney

[Joe A M]

I also have a Powermatic 45 from around 1970 or so with the reeves drive. A couple of years ago I added a VFD drive to it. It worked ok but it was a little noisy & wasn't as smooth running as I would have liked.  Last year I found a reasonably priced head stock off a model 45 with a 4 step pulley. I swapped out the reeves drive for the pulley system. I installed new bearings in the process. I like it much better now without the reeves and have a better speed range with the pulleys and VFD.