Nice work! How much did you improve runout?
Runout shouldn't have changed much, if at all, but now the bearings can take a load while still maintaining low runout! I spent a couple hours on it yesterday running in 4th gear which would have been outright impossible before — I'd have been lucky then to get 10 minutes on it before the spindle would freeze.
"spindle" and "freeze" are two words I really don't like seeing in proximity. I learned to cut on a similar, albeit burlier machine. American LaBlonde, rebuilt by the Army Corps of Engineers in 1919. My dad referred to it as a "total loss oiler." Thing was a hundred years old and would hold half a thou. Went to UW and they had similar machines for the undergrads to work on; they'd hold about fifteen thou. Turn 'em on and they made a sound kinda like a burr grinder.
This is how the feed gearbox sounds on mine now, but the spindle is very quiet. At this point, the lathe is not the source of most of my machining error. Hopefully that will change with some seat time! I think the wear in the ways and leadscrews is probably going to be what limits the precision of this machine. I could re-scrape the ways, have someone make a new leadscrew, and make myself a new cross-slide leadscrew and nut, but I'd probably be better off saving that money and buying a nicer machine instead. 15 thou tolerance is I think worse than a harbor freight drill press!a sound kinda like a burr grinder.