Mount Maintenance

[ZeroID (Brent)]

My EQ6 is not guiding well, erratic and loses the plot with error messages about angles that do not compute. I suspect it is time to open it up and do some mechanical maintenance to the drives. Has anyone got a 'how to' set of instructions or similar for an Skywatcher EQ6 Synscan Pro ?

Another option is a belt mod but I haven't seen that for sale over here. Where from and how much $$ does that run to ?

While I do that I think I'll rebuild my pier top. It's a weird rat cage that grew as my hardware evolved over the last few years. It would be more solid and look a bit more professional than it's current state.

[traveller (Bo)]

Hi Brent,
Astro baby's website has a step by step instruction on how to strip down, lube and rebuild an EQ6 mount. It's pretty straight forward and easy to do only hand tools are required.
http://www.astro-baby.com/EQ6%20rebu...own%20Home.htm
As for your pier rebuild, maybe you want to try my rat cage free approach.
http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/s...d.php?t=136618
Cheers
Bo

[peter_4059 (Peter)]

http://rowanastronomy.com/productsa2.htm#neq6beltkit

[ZeroID (Brent)]

Thanks gents,
Yeah, I searched and found the astrobaby site finally. Looked like quite a scary operation but as I read it through it became a bit more feasible. Going to have a wee pay with the worm adjustments first, might give me a clue as to whether the issue is coming from there.

Bo:
My current pier is a 250mm diameter concrete pipe. It is secured to the 10 tonnes of cement slab the Ob sits on by a tensioned M12 rod similar to Andrews drawing. Basically I want to cap the pipe with cast concrete head that secures the rods to the rat cage. The design is limited by the internal cavity providing access to the tensioning nut on the rod. I reckon I can make it all rigid enough for my purposes. The Rat Cage will be very low profiled, minimal length of unsupported stud.

[Atmos (Colin)]

Having been in your situation only a couple of weeks ago (planning on stripping the mount down for a spring clean and regrease), it is not that difficult. You just need to give yourself an afternoon and make sure that you either have a rubber mallet or a block of wood (wooden handle hammer works well) because there are a number of times where you need to knock components either in or out