After years of white-knuckle tightening of the screws and bolts on my mount I found that things actually work better without it. Reasonable (and painless) force is all I apply now.
The clutches on my HEQ5 Pro in particular don't take kindly to over-tightening, it throws out the orthogonality of the mount. I now just tighten them so they can still slip when necessary. When something or someone bumps the scope it's easier and cheaper to realign than to replace bent hardware.
Also, I managed to break the tripod by over-tightening the spreader bold. One of the legs just broke past its stop. While that seemed devastating at first it provided the perfect excuse to replace the junk-pod with the Berlebach I'm now using
