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I think you will find the quality of the gears etc in the LX200 is quite good (as long as your's has the brass transfer gears and not the plastic ones). The main problem lies with the crappy motor/transfer gear/ worm mounting bracket they use. A small error when drilling the holes to mount the motor through the drill drifting will cause the mesh of the transfer gears to be less then satisfactory by any stretch of the imagination (mine had about 30% engagement at best). Of course this is not adjustable. The Peterson kit is definately a step in the right direction as it allows you to do something about it. Once you have the drive nice and tight and have retrained it in "polar mode" on the wedge, you will find the next problem. These scopes are not designed well enough to be mounted on a wedge. The fork arms just aren't rigid enough to carry the weight and the slightest hint of a breeze will ruin any exposure you try. They are very stable in alt/az mode but not polar. You can use pec to remove any error after you have fixed the drive train but I have never found a way to fix the forks (bar pulling the scope off the mount and putting it on an EQ mount). I have a solid permenent pier (200mm steel) sitting on a 3 tonne steel reinforced concrete block and it still wobbles.
Mark
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