This is the first lathe that I owned. I bought it from a machinetrader who stated it came from an school inventory. It sufferd some abuse by the students. The trader had it painted by an apprentice who did a lousy paintjob. The cabinet under the lathe was ok (apart from the doors which were mounted upside down) but the lathe itself not.But it had an DRO and the price was right, so i planned to repaint it myself.

After a closer inspection and doing some work with it, I found the:

1 - The bedwear on the main travelways was worse than I thought. There was a ridge of several tenths of mm's along the side of the bedways

2 - The rotating plate from the topslide was bend. This was the cause of the cuttingtool going up and down when there were variations in the cutting force.

3 - The locking screws of the rotating plate carved the underside of the locking ways. When the topslide was turned it got stuck on several places, very annoying.

4 - The mm scale indications on the tailtock were barely readable (sign of wear)

5 - There were some rumbling noises in the backgear. Maybe these could be get rid off by readjusting the lever and replacing the rollerbearing, but they could also be due to too much wear of the backgears itself.

6 - At the front of the topslide there was quit a bit of damage

7 - There was a lot of backlash in the feedscrews. Some of it could problably be got rid of by readjusting the bronze nuts, but I suspected also guite a bit of wear in the feedscrews itself.

8 - The three jaw chuck also had some wear

I inquired around about regrinding the bed ways. Prices were getting up from 800 euro (dis and re-asembling by myself) a complete job could do around 2.000 euro. This was to much for this lathe.
I considered rescraping it myself. I read an 4 part article in Home Shop Machinist and bought a Biax scraper on ebay. After reading the book (or shall I name it holy scraping bible) Machine Tool Reconditioning I decided more tools were needed, such as straight edges. These were very pricy so the total investment (apart from the time) would go up to much.
When I ran into an other LZ280 that had only one of the above mentioned problems (there was no three jaw chuck included) but had a colletcloser + 20 collets, a genuine coolant unit, a steadyrest, a fixed rest and a manual toolrest as extra's the deal was quickly closed ( I even didn't dare to negotiate a lower price and turned in my old lathe the very next day). The former owners had also mounted extra dials on the tailstock and the manual apronfeed. There was also included a woodenshelf with a movable perspex safety shield.

I kept all of my existing tooling such as there were the faceplate/4 jaw chuck, the 3 jaw chuck, the DRO, the lathedogs and some other toolings. So the lathe is quite complete now.

I guess one has to pay learning money on the first lathe one buys. But thanks to the second deal I can hardly say it has cost me a single buck.