Dreadful Shrieking from the old gal.

[DanClarke]

The shaft and the bushes don't seem out of round to me. Perhaps they just went dry and need a lot of oil putting back in them like @Brad93 says.
I just tried to install that motherloving T-Link belt. Just NOPE! Very, very frustrating.
It cannot be just threaded through, it wants to be curling over so the outside face is inside etc. etc. and it is too stiff to get to pull/push through the tiny gap up there in the headstock.
The fact that my machine is backed up against a wall is not helping either.
I shall go search YouTube to see how it is meant to be done.

 

[RichardM]

A piece of wire as a pull through helped me when I did my old one and I found it easier to join the belt over the headstock not in the cabinet.
I also put my belt together before putting the c/shaft back in, but mine was a mk3

 

[Seadog]

A correction to my earlier statement, as others have said they are plain bushes.
The pulley is designed to have a quantity of oit inside it, hence the oiler button. BUT - be aware, when I rebuilt my lathe I found a quantity of casting sand still inside the pulley.
I found tgat to fir the N-T-L belt I needed to remove 7 or 8 links, according to the installation instructions, from the measured physical length.
I had to use a combination of a crow bar, bits of 3x2 and other sundry bits of metal, to persuade the belt to stretch enough so that I could manoeuvre the plummer blocks into a position whereby I coukd bolt them tight.
You do a good supply of swear words.

 

[DanClarke]

I spent several “happy”(?) hours replacing the T-Link drive belt on the lathe.

A real pig of a job because you cannot access anything easily and the lathe is backed against a wall. ☹

I had several attempts at routing the belt that ended in failure and in the end I tied an M12 nut to a piece of paracord and dropped it through the headstock over the drive pulley and down into the motor-cabinet.

Then I managed to tie the paracord to the belt and pull it up through the internal cabinet channels up over the pulley then back down the other side into the motor-cabinet once more.

The supplied belt was already reduced to the same number of “links” as the old one that came off, but it was still too long. 2 more attempts were needed to get the a size that did not try to fall off the drive pulley.

Working blind sitting on the floor with your hands inside a cabinet and where you can only do stuff by feel because the doorway to the cabinet is a hatch and the thing is a steel box is not good for ones posture, temperament or general happiness.

It is “done” but I can still "stall" it with firm hand pressure on the chuck and I think it may loosen up even further after a few hours of use and need redoing all over again. ☹

If I take any more links out I will need some serious force to pull the intermediate shaft back into position though.

 

[Seadog]

If I take any more links out I will need some serious force to pull the intermediate shaft back into position though.

Hence my post above.