cantharis

SW130s may be good but ye canna change the Laws of Physics Jim. The larger your aperture the better the resolution of your scope.

I did this last year - following Astronomy Boy´s guidelines. All I can recommend is you do carefully take notes of what you dismantle and in what order. Get in some lithium based grease, and some diesel to clean the old glop out. I needed a 5mm 4mm 2.5mm and 1.5mm Allen key, and a 17mm box spanner. The result is a much smoother, easier to operate mount - well worth doing. Good luck.

Like Merlin66, all my stuff is Skywatcher - much as I would love to help I have no experience of the gear involved.

My neighbours better not complain about my EQ-5 !!! Or they will get a ripe comment back about their cats crapping in my garden at about the same hours !!!

Like you - I just follow the manual !!!

Agreed totally - ADM is superb quality gear.

I have an adaptor on my EQ5 (same as cg5) that takes Vixen and Losmandy dovetails. http://www.firstlightoptics.com/celestron-mounts/adm-dual-saddle-upgrade-for-eq5-and-cg5-mounts.html

Ye canna change the Laws of Physics, Jim - the larger the aperture the better (smaller) will be the resolution of the scope. All other things being equal - like can you actually lift the scope, will your chosen mount be beefy enough - aperture is still king. Hope this helps.

Absolutely - that will lube your EQ mount fine!!!

Again, the usual load of confusing and conflicting opinions. Firstly, the gears in your mount are very LIGHTLY loaded at all times, and when it is just tracking are experiencing close to a zero load - after all, we are just rotating a tube that is balanced and only masses a few kilos. So the manufacturers can make the bearing surfaces out of soft, easily machinable metals like brass and aluminium and even plastics. Our cars have wheel bearings which operate under the most gruelling conditions, high rotational speeds, continuously loads of hundreds of kilograms and shock loads of thousands of kilograms, all happening at high temperatures. For these harsh conditions a lithium based grease is invariably that of choice. I find that this high performance lithium grease is more than adequate for our lightly loaded mounts, and recommend its use. I would indeed recommend that anyone buying a mount made by Synta clear out the stiff glop that the makers put in - mostly to disguise the sometimes large clearances that can occur, and rebuild it carefully using a lithium grease. I have done this with all my mounts with total and lasting success, and an immediate improvement in how the mounts function. I have found that Synta´s stiff glop can make balancing the scope in the mount a most imprecise operation - basically preventing the mount from achieving an important design function.

I read the earlier post as well - didn´t see any merit in releasing the clutches during alignment. You are effectively moving the star to the wrong position, rather than moving the mount to the correct one.

My car jump starter does everything I could ask - runs my GOTO for hours and hours. Why pay more?

Ye canna change the Laws of Physics Jim - The greater the aperture of a telescope, the better (smaller) its resolution. So yes, all other things being discounted (irrelevant(?) things like its mass), aperture IS King !!

I live in Spain and use Teleskop Service whenever I can. Prices are competitive and carriage way cheaper than the ripoff merchants in the UK charge. And Maplins are one of the worst offenders in that respect - they wanted a whopping 18UKP to send a small relay weighing about an ounce!! Someone mentioned power tanks - I bought a car starter type tank identical to one that Maplins carry for €32 in my local Carrefour.

As a Spanish resident TS is my supplier of choice - prices are competitive and their delivery charges are far more realistic than the exorbitant amounts demanded by UK dealers, who seem to regard overseas customers as suckers to be ripped off.