[Imme (Jon)]

Stage 1 - The tear down....

I tell ya what, these mounts are super simple to pull apart....let’s hope they go together as easy!

Few issues found during disassembly that probably didn’t help my guiding -
1. One of the delrin washers was broken. Cracked right through.
2. One of the RA Allen screws was stripped in the hole (from the factory because I haven’t touched them!).
3. While pulling the insides to pieces I noticed some grit on my fingers..... guessing it’s swarf from manufacturing or some crap from the striped thread (thread opens up into the main body)
4. Dec axis was pretty loose....well loose’ish
5. There was plenty of gear slop (not meshing properly) in the motor to middle gear.....especially on the DEC axis. The belt mod alone should fix a fairly significant issue just by replacing these gears I’d say.

Seems there was a good amount of grease in there which still seemed fairly good..... but this will all be cleaned out and replaced regardless.

Bearings seem ok but I will replace the DEC worm ones. RA don’t need replacing as the zero backlash block comes with new high quality bearings apparently. I’ve ordered some Japan made 608 bearings on eBay which I will use for the DEC.

Ive also found some PTFE sheet on eBay which I’ll cut up into a washer and use to replace the broken delrin washer......PTFE and delrin are basically the same thing so it’ll be fine.

Grease- I’ve ordered some Superlube grease to re-grease the mount. Seems that this is the go to stuff.

The rounded grub screw..... appears to be enough ‘meat’ left here to drill out and put a threaded sleeve in. Should end up stronger than original in think.

All in all I’m pretty happy to have found all the issues....it gives me a reason why the mount started acting up and in turn this gives me things to fix to make it better.
Time to clean this thing up now!