Lee Classic Turret Press tune up, maintenance and lube...primer lever fix!

guys treat up here thanks for tuning in the view I've got for you today is what I've been thinking about for a while and what I like to do is a tune-up slash lubrication / adjustment of your lead class eater press now what I'm going to do in this video is try to show you some things that you maybe haven't seen before give me my own ideas on it but we're going to separate the linkage we're going to drop the RAM I'm going to show you some adjustments that you can make to the RAM head to fix them and some cleaning you can do there to fix that annoying primer lever sticking problem where it hits the shell holder we're going to talk about the least safety prime will talk about 86 system my own Tribune's pair of parts that you may want to keep on hand so stick with me this might get a little bit long I'll try to keep it precise but hang with me and I'll try to make it worth your while okay so before we get started I just want to show you this little contraption I made just a little sort of articulating arm allows me to put a drum style powder measure over the top of my turf grass and it keeps it isolated over the top so it's not running you know shaking with the torque around the curve move and allows me to dispense a little larger amount of powder and do it fairly accurately anyway I just want to show you that because I'm going to leave the base long and it's not really self-explanatory what that is okay so and it's kind of cold but of chhotya so one thing I wanted to address before we get too far to this is the Auto indexing system and this ratchet housing here the in the bushing inside that's made out of plastic now this drives people crazy a little bit because they've got this plastic part on the press but I've been using this press for thousands and thousand rounds and it's just not an issue if that puts your mind at ease this thing is durable as long as you don't bind up and force it through it's just not a problem now the way I think about this is I think about this as the weakest link or fuse or a sacrificial part so if you did have some binding or something and you went in and push through I can see this piece giving way as opposed to something else on the press so sometimes thinking about things is all about perspective but this thing works fine it's not a it's not an issue of precision because the ball that locks it into place is actually up in here all this does is just push it to the next advanced it to the next thing so I'll give you that's just my perspective on it one thing if you take this off make sure that you have this part or ended up and the reason for that is if you turn it over you have this part down you drop the ramp you're going to you're going to break this piece off okay so just a few spare parts that I think is worth having on hand for a little insurance in case you're worried about maybe the durability of the indexing system is one is this little ratchet housing I guess they call it something like that anyway you get these from Lee and have a few on hand if you if you've got confident in this there I think you're about six bucks so that's one thing I would say also inside the ratchet housing is this little indexing bushing if you can see that and this bushing you know it looks like something that we're out pretty fast but if you keep it lubricated and and the tour running free day lasts for a really long time and incidentally if I don't get to it later the flat side on this bushing goes up the side with the little lip on it goes down so there's two parts from the indexing system now next thing I will recommend that you have a fuel in there is a little spring that you see right here this spring is important because he keeps the shell holder locked into place and that's also important for free operation of the primer levers now this thing kind of walks out of here a little bit so the levers got to push it back out of the way and that's a catch point so having a real strong where these in place is part of the trouble-free operation and the last thing I'd kind of recommend that you keep on hand is this little wiper deal this goes in your if you're using the auto disc powder charging system this'll wiper fits right up in here and as a charge bar or discs move and forth this is a wiper just wore you know fills the cavity the powder comes out fills a cavity and then as the charge board goes by this wiper wipes the power off clean so if you're having a leakage and up in here or you're losing power this is something you could try to change I've got a few of these on hand just keep them in case this surface here wears for that very reason that's all I've got for spare parts that ever you know recommend you can load up on these parts for say ten or fifteen dollars maybe if you're a prepper go therby you're ready for the zombie apocalypse okay so let's go ahead and assemble this for cleaning and lubrication the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to pull the connecting rod and housing time this is the indexing rod in housing here you can see how this bushing is oriented on there with a little lip down and the flat side up and that's how you want to run it so we'll just wipe this down and clean it and we'll move on to the next step okay for the next step what we're going to do is we're going to get ready to pull this Ram out and just a word about that if you leave this priming lever and a show holder in place when you disconnect everything down here it will make it easier that brand won't fall out on the ground and it'll hold it till you're ready to take it out now to disconnect the linkage so we can get the RAM out we're just using a half-inch wrench pull up pull the handle off and pull this bushing out and then we're going to use a level 16 wrench to take these two nuts off here okay now to get the RAM free a couple things to note there is a pin on either side here and these pins go into these upper levers here these pins are pressed in and spline into the metal so we don't want to disturb those or take them out there's really no reason to so that means that we can't take these levers clear off and we're not going to be able to get this pin or shaft out the holds the rest of the levers out what we're going to do is just exploit the tolerances in there in order to gain room to get each one out so it helps to lift the the press up a little bit and scoot this shaft over here to get one side out or the other I'm going to bring this one up first sometimes it also helps to lift the RAM up to take advantage of some of the room that's available there and then once we do that then we slide this shaft over here and that gives us a little bit of room to work this side then we just lift it loose like that and the rams freak now I can take my show holder out and I can lift my priming lever out and then let the the RAM and let the random drop down so there's my RAM removed and my lovers are freed so that I can clean all these contact points okay so to clean the old grease in and gunk off of it I clean this pretty recently so it's not it's not too bad shape but I just want to show you this anyway I use a brake clean and it's just a nice degreaser and at least the surface is pretty dry and then there's enough right here where you can actually kind of rinse everything out and then it dries pretty fast so I use this for a lot of stuff around the shop other than brakes you won't want to do this in the house you're going to want to do this outside least in a shop or something but I'm just gonna straight this down look at the old free softer they're a particular attention down inside I got a rag gather I catch the stuff that's coming out like I said those primers produce some pretty dirty stuff there so we'll push that out and just get ready for some fresh Lube there is a ram a little bit on that in one you can see you down there let's go ahead I'm going to spray off the levers here just going to get the old Bruce out you have to work with the fact that you can't wholly disassemble this so this move the lovers around and get access just kind of like the old stuff out so after a while you get dirt and stuff collected in here and the dirt mix with grease or oil or anything else you have on here is just going to create like a Friday ting compound that will cause we're so it's a good idea to clean this up you keep it clean and lubricated you can really minimize the wear in the linkage and excessive play that might develop over time and I'm just going to rinse down in the center here and we're going to wipe that out just going to do this like a rifle bore shut right right down in the center there and that's about it for that well the other area you want to keep clean is you know this area here on your on your turret and this area around here and then the indexing ball that's right here you should be able to see that and I like to just spray a little bit kind of on it and maybe try to get some box then we'll replace place that with some lubricant afterwards just because this thing runs around picks up dust and stuff then we want to get all that out of there periodically okay so let me show you the first area that we have trouble with alley classy turf press and you guys have reload 45 ACP with the large primers and try to do volume are going to know what I'm talking about probably not everybody but some folks have issues with this primer lever hanging up as it comes in and it hits the shell holder and basically it looks like this you know this thing rides up a little bit and it catches right there and if you get a primer sticking out it's even worse so that's one of the things I want to address and show you how to fix that there's two two things that caused it I'll show you through this one first so basically when they when they machine this we'll call this the RAM head I don't know what they actually call this piece but this piece is separate right here and it can be rotated left and right when they machine this not out here you create a sharp edge right here so they come back in which standard practice and just kind of break this edge right here you can see how that's edge is clean otherwise it would be very sharp on both sides there now the problem with that is they could use a little more attention to detail when they break this edge sometimes they push some of that you know the process they use whatever it is they push some of that metal around the corner and into this this notch right here where the primer lever right now if you measure the gap between the cup on the primer lever and really actually all this surface area here it's not very much and on the large primer lever it's even worse so the the gap between here and here this edge and this edge and the primer covenants will be moving freely in and out is I've got about 8,000 clearance so if you're pushing metal in there one that makes a catch point then - I've actually taken up some of the space that this lever needs to operate it so fix for that it's actually pretty simple just take a file or you know whatever maybe have a better idea but I just took a file and laid it in there and just kind of follow that flat area there and let the file take down any of that metal that's been pushed into that notch kind of hard to do around a camera hammer hopefully you see what I'm doing here just you don't want to take off a lot of material but you do want to make sure that there's no rough edges that have gotten into that that groove right there there that notch it's going to cut your machine now second I take it even a step farther obviously this is low-tech but it works and I just took a piece of sandpaper you use like a 300 grit and just put it in here and just again try to maintain it as flat as you can just kind of polish those walls that that primer lever has to right up against make sure that there's no rough edges to both sides and just sitting work them till they're nice and smooth and this will greatly improve the reliability of that primer lever and the whole priming system okay we got everything clean now let's go on the lubrication the first thing since we just worked on the primer lever pocket or whatever you want to call it if any I'll show you that I'd like cuz I like to use this graphite dry film and I like this to spray down in this little area here we'll let this dry and what that does is that gives me sort of a graphite slick surface on these walls here with that primer to operate you can even put some of that on the primer lever just to make it even a little bit more slick the second thing is is this stuff is sort of static pretty so if powder falls down in here or you know debris from old primers being washed out it's just going to tend to fall right through so I think that's a good that's my product of choice for just cleaning up that notch air and just put a little more a little bit of sort of a soft lubricated surface on there but still be dry : okay so the next thing I found that I really like for lubrication is just some real bearing axle type grease and I like to use that on the RAM itself and I like to use that on all these contact points down in here I like this I like the higher viscosity of wheel bearing grease because it sort of gives me this kind of hydraulic smooth feel when operating the RAM and after the grease kind of settles in and works in I really like the way that feels in and a viscosity takes up any kind of play that exit a little bit of extra play in there so you just get a nice a nice clean feel to it but for a part in lubrication I'll show you is and I apologize I don't have my grease gun but these little pins that go right through here I'll put a picture up so you can see it but these little pins are hollow and they've got an exit hole that kind of comes out right with this lever right and so you can use a needle fitting like these these are available at autozone and put your grease gun on there and just I use the same thing wheel bearing grease and just pump it through there and it'll come out around this lever on both sides and if you've got any wear or Freddy products in there you can actually pursue it and push the old grease out if there is any and put fresh grease in there now if you do that it's going to build up on here you're going to want to get in there and clean that out particularly if you're working in your house and you've got carpet because that's just going to work back and forth that eventually kind maybe fall out on your carpet and I want you to have to be responsible for that so anyway just a little meal fitting on both sides there pump a little grease through there that'll lubricate this upper and keep the wear down on that okay so for the grease I like to get in here and get the grease on these uh these little pivot points here let's slide that shaft back and forth there and you know just a little bit on there put some up here where this one's going to eventually right around that edge there and you like that back and forth make sure you could lubricant and you can feel right away you can rough this out of those levers then after we run this for a little bit we go back in there and just wipe that down get the excess that kind of comes out put on more than you wipe out what you don't need okay now these two little lugs here you see they go into the press I mean you go into the land and they're actually open to the interior of the ramp so we put the grease on these just make sure that you focus on putting it on this part right here and keep it off of this flat part because put it on that flat part I know from experience that it's going to start collecting primers and so if I said what's up I just put a poncho and close it up and add a bunch of primers build up on there and they wouldn't fall into the collection tube so I don't do that anymore now for the RAM you can see that how that's hollow in there and we just want to keep the grease out of the most interior part there I'm going to use my finger on this part here I'm just gonna this is dry from the old grease off I'm just going to rub this on there good lastly I'm just going to go ahead and and a little bit down here to make that this Ram is writing on Greece and not metal to metal contact I'd like you see it really gives a nice feel and you are when you run that round once it gets kind of warp in okay so we're all ready for reassembly just going to go ahead and put this up in here you feel when it first goes in it's real stiff until it kind of wears in we're going to throw a priming lever back in there we don't have to so it gives us a little hands for you if you wanna let the land go so now move your average over we just can do this in a reverse I'm going to just lift the RAM up it gives you the most space you can get free sometimes you can spin this a little bit get it here okay so one sides in but by putting the lever almost horizontal it lets you take advantage of what play is in it really well so I'm going to move this over if you tap on this with a very light mallet or something no hammer on it yeah okay so see I've got that in place now before we put the leaven 60s nuts on we're gonna have to hold this in place because I'm tree tightness down that's going to take up that space and then I'll know that well bushing or spacer won't fit anymore all ready to reinstall handle ok so the next part under lubrication I'll show you what else I like this is my indexing rod but the indexing bushing is still installed and it's a good shape so I'm not going to take it off but I like to use this little shooter choice FB 10 lubricant this is just gun lube repent and stuffs really slick and and I like the way it works on here just put a little bit on that shaft so that this bushing has sent me right on here the other place that I like to use this FB 10 is on the turret area up here it's like the puts them on my finger just kind of work it into that indexing ball there and just keep a little bit on the interior this this turret where that's where the turd housing whatever your I'm not sure West Hall that the and then here I'll put a little bit just on there and some on a slip up here because as it rotates it sits up here this lip sits on there this stuff does a really nice job making the fresh one smooth that's pretty much ever for lubrication ok so phase 2 of getting the primer lever to work properly is alignment of this ram head that's on top up here and this thing is adjustable you can actually put something in there now you can use a 1/2 inch wrench and you can actually rotate it'll split right here you can actually rotate this left or right now why that's critical I'm going to show you I'm going to mess up my press to show you the screwdriver upstate and that's why I'm just going to put a little bit of pressure I'll move that out of place now what's critical with this this lever is that it comes down on this flat spot right there nice and clean and if you notice it's got a couple little nubs here sort of like guides and there's a radius in the bottom there what we don't want to do is come down anywhere near these nubs you want to be as we want to lie evenly on this flat part here and the reason is because if you come down on the side watch how this primer lever swings over see that right there and if the primer lever swings over it's going to slide up the side of the of the housing here and again there's anything there it'll catch and change the way this primer lever operates it has to be free and it has to be able to use let gravity this weighted part just flip back and forth without any restriction so what we can do is we can take get in here and just make sure that we fall freely on that flat spot without its side loading either way now if you really want to get technical you can actually use a feeler gauge and you can measure how much free player you have here move it to one side measure here split it in half remove a couple thousands get a feeler gauge for me I had about 12 thousands so if I round down to 10 split it in half to 5 I can actually use a feeler gauge to see where I'm sitting here so I've run the press up and down and let it let the primer level and where it will when I do that if I can get in here without shifting from side to side too much I know that I'm pretty much I've got this thing adjusted to where the lever is in the center of the space that's available and this can be a little this is time consuming but it's worth taking your time to get it right I think and I'm just going to put something in there really the longer lever you have them the easier is to get a fine adjustment these things like the jerk back of course sir I couldn't wear our nerves a little bit but anyway maybe the measurements not so critical I just want to show you that if I can get an equal gap on both sides and this things laying freely then I know that I'm in a position with this head that I'm going to be good reliability and not preload this lever to one side or the other I'm going to put the indexing rod back together again the flat side goes up don't need to over tighten this just snug is fine that's probably how most of these get broken is stripped we're good and put this turret back in here a little bit nice and smooth so the next thing we'll do is we'll make an adjustment here this is already adjusted but I'll just show you what I like on this part and then we'll talk about some height adjustments you can make here now this part I just like this lycée P prime arm come in and it seems like if he set it up just maybe just one to two degrees to the right of the lever when it's sitting here naturally that seems to be just about right for good service on that guy's the last thing I want to share with you in regard to the lease 85 is the possibility of changing the elevation of this whole priming lever and for me that that's something that seems to help to the raw ability of the primer exchange from the lycée Department of the priming lever so this comes with a 25,000 or 250,000 pushing quarter inch bushing mounted right under here now what I've done is I replaced this bushing with three 5/16 washers of varying sizes to get a stack up that is about 195,000 just what is that fifty fifty-five thousands left so I want this lead this priming lever arm to hit right about here guide up and at the point where the primer goes in I have enough contact here to flatten at that priming lever and square the dispenser to the lever so that the primer can get in here more effectively and so lowering this seems to be just about the right medicine for that now that squares up right there anyway that's something else you can play with to prove the reliability of the primer exchange to the primer lever now last thing last tiny little tip I'll give you is to run a little piece of tape like I've got electrical tape here something to absorb sound so that when that injection rod taps up and down on there you don't have that steel on steel sound that will bore through your brain after 100 or so and I know around that's just my last little tip for you guys we're guys that's it for me today I hope you found something here that you can use I hope I showed you something that you probably haven't seen before that's always my goal in any way if you think this video is useful consider cutting that URL pasting it into your chat rooms where you're talking about reloading and and share with others also social media is great consider clicking the like button maybe subscribe I'll try to keep new information coming to you periodically anyway thanks a be safe and have a great day

Channel: TreeTopFlier

Views: 102,886

Keywords: lee classic turret press, turret press maintenance, lee safety prime, auto index, turret press tune up, turret press, ram removal, tune-up tuneup, maintain reloading press, primer lever, large primer lever, catches on shell holder, hits shell holder, turret press adjustment, primer lever sticks, Lee safety prime, Tune up your turret press, Clean turret press, Adjust turret press, Lee precision, Lube turret press, Maintain turret press, Repair turret press

Id: lZEzO-taBuM

Length: 29min 13sec (1753 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 07 2015