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This issue, polar alignment, is more complicated than you are thinking.
1) For astrophotography you must have high precision. Therefore the visual procedure for drift analyse isn't a good option. You need to use a camera. Webcam for example. You don't need to have beautiful images. You must have a star only as a dot spot. The best software to do polar alignment, for me, is EqAlign: eqalign.sourceforge.net/index-en.html
It tells you what and how much to adjust. It is interactive. It has some problem with freezing the camera image, but you can work well with it.
2) NEQ6 isn't a good mounting with respect to Periodic Error. No problem for visual observing, but for astrophotography it is terrible. The file PEC (Periodic Error Correrction) will not work fine with NEQ6, since the Periodic Error of this mounting isn't repetitive. You haven't identical senoidal alike shape with many cicles.
3) it is normal you get only 60 seconds and sometimes, due to position of gears, a bit more up to 2 minutes.
4) if the grease of the NEQ6 gears is very old, the Periodic Error will increase very much.
5) if there is some gap between the gears ... you can't get a stable performance.
Conclusion:
With NEQ6 you need a guinding camera system. And this is another problem, also.
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