Weiler Matador Lathe- Part 13: Norton Reassembly as Proof of Concept (Before Cutting New Gears)

In Part 13 of the Weiler Matador restoration series, we go back into the Norton gearbox — not to repair it, but to understand it. Before cutting even a single new gear, two critical checks must be done, and both of them lead us back to the gearbox we opened in Part 6. In that episode, we discovered that the driving gear didn’t fully engage with every gear in the train. Some gears meshed deeply, others barely touched — and that uneven engagement caused the wear and damage we found. Now that we’re preparing to remake the entire gear set, we need to verify: the correct gear thickness for proper engagement whether the oversized diameters were intentional or just badly remade the sliding pinion height and its real working position and whether the gearbox can be restored to standard ISO module 1.5 geometry To answer these questions, we must reassemble the Norton gearbox as a proof of concept. Only with everything back in place can we understand how the original system worked — and why some gears failed. This step is essential before cutting the prototype gear and before committing to the full rebuild. For any questions or requests, or even just for a greeting, write me at: [email protected]