MoonStarer

I have an Esprit, and mine arrived (from FLO) considerably cleaner, but not what I'd call pristine. Some of the particles on your objective look suspiciously like brass from the focusser rack and pinion. Mine was quite poor in that regard and required a fair bit of cleaning up. Not something you should have to do on something this costly. I put up with mine as I enjoy the fiddling and fettling just as much as looking through a telescope!

I have one of those (got it from Starlight Instruments as I recall), but I don't think it would really be up to the job of dismantling a mount like that. It's meant for undoing lens retaining rings, a much more delicate operation!

The manual says light tension. I just pushed the motor against the belt to hold things in place as I did up the bolts, seems to work perfectly well.

I've just done exactly this, belt modded and re-greased my EQ6 this week. I used this grease https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B007WR38TY/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o09_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 The mount isn't high performance engine, you could probably use butter and it would be fine.?

They are imperial - 1/4" X 20 TPI UNC, so M6 bolts unfortunately won't fit.

WDS Components do all sorts of knobs and hand screws, in metal or plastic, you might find something suitable there

I spent a fun couple of hours making an improvement to the bolts that secure my Sky-Watcher counterweights. I've had my mount for a while, and the plastic end pieces have been squished into non-existence. The steel bolts really make a mess of the chrome plating on the counterweight shaft. I decided to make a brass insert to replace the useless plastic. Removing the plastic insert was easy; drill a small hole into it and drive a screw in. As the screw bottomed out it drove out the insert. I had some old 2BA brass machine screws handy - I expect M5 would have been a better fit, but I didn't have any in brass. I soldered the screw in, cut the slotted head off, and then run a nut down the thread and secured this with solder. Then cleaning up and rounding down the nut to finish up. It would would have been better to use a hex bolt, rather than a screw and nut, but it's just what I had to hand. If I was doing it again I'd probably buy M5 brass bolts. My counterweights are now much more secure, and it doesn't mark the shaft.

Canon have been manufacturing Fluorite elements for their 'L' series camera lenses for many years, I've never heard of any reports of deterioration. I suspect the average paparazzi takes very little care with their lenses!

I saw this article on cleaning optics recently https://www.newport.com/n/how-to-clean-optics This is from a fairly high-end optical supplier (laser optics), so hopefully their advice is ok.

This is my solution to this little problem... I used a piece of electrical cable trunking, specifically the cover, and held it in place with a Jubilee clip. It's all very light and cheap, and the plastic is fairly low-friction so it rotates quite easily.

Years ago, I made cross using BosTik adhesive. It's quite 'stringy' and you can stretch it across an aperture to make quite nice cross hairs.

Thanks all, I think it might be fun to try to see what I can see, I've got a decent 10" scope but I've never tried daylight observations.

I know Venus can be seen in daylight if you know where to look, but can any stars or other planets be seen in broad daylight with the aid of a telescope?

I recently bought the Altair Sabre 2.0 Alt-Az mount https://www.altairastro.com/altair-sabre-alt-azimuth-telescope-mount-v2.0.html I use it for a 120 mm short tube refractor and it's pretty perfect for that. For the giggles I also tried mounting a 10" Newtonian, and it's surprising stable with that too. It did need careful balancing though. No slo-mo capability though, but other than that it's a very capable bit of kit.

If it's just the head that has rounded off, and the thread is still ok, you can often use a Torx head driver where a hex key fails. Torx drivers have a star shaped profile and can get more bite in the recess of the grub screw.