Hi John
There were two types of chuck mounting on the 254's the D1-3 Camlock or a taper with three studs as used on many chinese lathes. The camlock has three square keyholes that operate cams to pull the chuck in and hold it, the other a flange with three holes,you will need to identify which type yours is. A bit of googling or posting a picture of your spindle nose would help.
D1-3 backplates and chucks are easily available, I have purchased from both Warco and Gloster tooling with complete satisfaction, not tried Chronos. But I had to send the backplates from another well known supplier back as the fit was appallling. I bought a 125mm 4 jaw s/c from ARC and am very pleased with it.
I seem to remember reading that the D1-3 backplates can be easily modified to fit the non camlock spindle by replacing the existing camlock pins by studs, but my memory often fails me!. I'm sure someone on the forum will know more about that type of mounting. If you PM me I can try to scan the page from the manual showing chuck fitting.
Dave
Just re-read the trail above after morning caffeine injection and had missed that the D1-3 backplate conversion has been covered already, so it's not only the memory thats failing then! But I did have a very late night yesterday!!
Edited By Dave Wootton on 12/06/2021 07:27:39
Edited By Dave Wootton on 12/06/2021 07:30:24