Hi Greg,
The first thing to do to improve the movement of your scope is to clean all the bearing surfaces, regardless if it's just the altitude or azimuth bearings that are bugging you. Dobs often are neglected in this aspect and end up sticky and hard to handle.
And it doesn't matter if the bearing surfaces are laminate or aluminium, they all get soiled.
*Use something like methylated spirits (denatured ethanol) or isopropyl alcohol and with a soft cloth clean well these surfaces - these don't leave a greasy residue. You'll be surprised at how much dirt you'll remove.
* Wipe over these surfaces with as good a high quality car wax as you can get. If you don't have a car, you'll have enough wax to last til your grandkids retire,
* The Teflon pads only wipe over with the alcohol. DONOT wipe them with the wax! If the azimuth bearing material on the ground board is of the roller type, take your time to clean as best as you can with the alcohol.
Is the bearing material on the ground board Teflon or the roller type?
Reassemble your scope and you'll notice straight away an improvement.
Clean these components first and let us know how you go. It is far cheaper and easier than choping and changing components, and the improvement in action is really, really significant.
I clean all the bearing surfaces and wax the laminates once a year on my 3 dobs, and I am ALWAYS surprised at the improvement in their action. Cleaning is all the maintanence that is required really. I look after my scopes, yet the bearing still need a little attention.
If you are still unhappy with the azimuth movement after cleaning, if the ground board bearing is of the roller type, you may like to change this for some virgin Teflon pads. The only other modification to be done after that is the Ebony Star laminate on the base of the rocker box. This last one is a last resort.