Quote Originally Posted by tonyfoale View Post
I was 15/16 when i bought my first lathe, a Myford Super7. I cannot believe that was 60 years ago.
Do not quote me on this but I think that JET and other Asian manufacturers can supply their lathes with either metric or imperial feed screws, depending on the country of destination. Like you my JET has imperial threads but I bought it 11 years ago in the US when I lived there for 3 years. It will not matter soon because I plan on fitting a motor driven ball lead screw. I may even go completely mad and do a full CNC, it would be easy enough.
The more I think about issues with this lathe, None of the feed dials can be zeroed, as they are part of the hand crank thrust bearing tightening assembly. Thinking back, I've done many improvements on this "pre-assembled kit". Nothing like what you've just done.

The best add on was a DRO back 30 years ago, which cost almost as much as the original purchase price of $1800 in 1977. The price of DROs has come down to where like VFDs they are commodity items. As well making my own backplate and purchasing a new Bison brand 3 jaw chuck.

The spindle thread was a real bastard at 50mm diameter, 8TPI. I recently found 2 backplates on eBay that fit this thread. They were slightly too tight of a thread fit, so I got them centered in a 4 jaw, and retimed the thread so I could use the lathes power feed with an internal threading bar. I manually rotated this assembly to scrape the interference fit. So much for mass manufacturing with interchangeable parts.