Great stuff Steve and welcome to the elite Saxon club!! Have you been inducted and learnt the secret Saxon hand shake yet?
Yes, i think the first thing i did was screw a thick poly rubber pad as a bumper stop.
Dont worry about the height between the OTA and the rocker box it allows you to fit encoders for an Argo Navis with no problem.
The squeak is a little bit of a problem, so far i found that the black bearins on the sides needed a little tightening which helped a little and secondly i modified it by replacing one of the white nylon rollers on each side with encased roller bearings and a little bit of silicon spray.The squeak is not completely gone but probably 90%, i would be interested to see how you go with the graphite.
I also glued a peice of flat poly rubber from clark rubber between the alt bearing and the side of the malemine because i had a bit too large a gap between the two and this helps lock the ota in place much more firmly with the tensioning handle when using heavy ep's and barlows! It probably did not need it but I'm a bit of a tinkerer and if i can try to improve something a little i will.
Well i'm glad your happy with it so far and yes i agree one of its let downs is the focuser though you can fit a crayford but you must drill 4 new holes in the ota and you would need to use an extension tube.