[Tannehill]

Excellent, congratulations. You might consider borrowing or asking for help in the field with a Chesire or laser collimator to see how much benefit you get for the expense, over and above the sighttube technique. Maybe you – like many – have a good enough eye to line it up without those fancy (expensive) tools. Or do you already have a laser?

The mirror can't fall out by removing the locking bolts. The mirror is held by the collimation bolts. But if all the collimation bolts are removed so that they aren't threaded into the upper part of that cell assembly, the mirror and upper cell assembly - the part of the mirror cell holding the mirror with the rubber-padded clips - can clunk down and incur damage. That's a good point if you are swapping out new collimation bolts or springs, for example: replace one collimation bolt/spring assembly at a time, don't try to remove them all at once before putting new ones in. That clunk sound is quite disheartening...

Yes, you'll need to loosen the locking bolts to collimate. The mirror is held by dynamic tension between the springs pushing the mirror "up" and the collimation bolts pulling "back" against the springs by threading into a part of the upper assembly holding the mirror. The springs need a bit of compression so that the mirror is held snug. If a spring is loose, the mirror will wiggle about and not hold collimation. The locking bolts just thread up and push against the back of that upper assembly and blocks the action of those bolts from moving the assembly "back" toward you when you tighten the collimation bolts. But the locking bolts don’t prevent you from loosening the collimation bolts.

If you have time and study the back of the cell and twiddle bolts and watch things move, it should make sense.

Congrats on your success. But do not presume to have attained permanent satisfaction. No. Sadly, peace and happiness are not yours to enjoy. Ever.

Aperture fever implies a temporary and treatable ailment. It is the wrong term, as this is far from some temporary or easily-solved problem.

The better term is Aperturophilia: the permanent obsession for greater greater aperture. It is treatable, mind you, but the treatment is more expensive each year of the disease. It is not curable.

Astrotechnoneurosis: a pernicious attraction to increasingly complicated astronomy technology. Can be diagnosed when one's astronomy email messages contain more acronyms than real words, or when the astro gadgets in one's possession weigh more than your telescope.

Astrophotographemia: a distressing and often socially disabling impulse to capture and process astronomy images yourself. A truly tragic disease. Sadly, but perhaps mercifully, the victims are strangely unaware of the pathologic nature of this condition.

and

Hyperatlasophitis (a costly build-up of both text-based and software-based stellar mapping publications).

There are more, but I don’t want to frighten you. It will, unfortunately, become all to clear in the years to follow….

Regards
Scott