Mark_C

Following on from my first post, I have successfully managed to dismantle the mount after a nightmare of a time and with some help. The retaining nut that I was talking about with the 4 holes inside the chrome clutch is actually held in by 3 grub screws around the perimeter of the nut. Do not try and remove this nut without loosening the grub screws or else you will begin to strip the thread on the shaft and potentially jam the clutch (like I did!). I really wish there was more documentation about this online as it's frustrating having to be a guinea pig where schematics should really be freely available to avoid things like this happening. Access to the grub screws is gained through the threaded holes of the clutch which you have to rotate until you see the holes beneath line up, I think the grub screws have a 2mm allen key head. The nut should not be difficult to remove once the grub screws have been removed. I have successfully managed to tap a 5mm thread from where the old thread was stripped for the RA worm alignment screw and have installed a larger grub screw, this should make fine tuning the worm position more precise. It is quite shocking how much swarf is present in the worm/gears from factory, I'm pretty sure this will have an effect on the accuracy of the mount. I'm currently waiting for isopropyl alcohol to arrive on Monday so will clean everything up and remove the old grease, remove the swarf and put some TF2 lithium grease in its place, this should make everything smoother. Hopefully I should be able to remove the RA backlash completely once reassembled. I will try and write up a guide for dismantling/reassembly, as explained before the internals are quite a bit different than the EQ6 so it would be best not to use existing guides as a basis. Mark.

Hi all, Has anyone successfully managed to disassemble one of these mounts? I know they're relatively new and most owners will have not had the need to open them up but I am trying to retap the thread for the RA worm positioning grub screw and the whole mount needs to be in bits to avoid swarf falling in to the gears. I can't see a single guide online about disassembly of these particular mounts and the excellent disassembly guide on Astro Baby regarding the EQ6 doesn't really apply to these mounts as the layout is quite a bit different. Disassembling the Dec axis was very easy but the RA is next to impossible. Where the counterweight bar goes through at the bottom of the RA axis, there looks like a retaining nut with 4 holes at the bottom, looks like a special keyed instrument has to fit inside the holes, bit like a grinder key. I think removing this retaining nut is the only way to get to the RA axis and with the clutch being surrounded on the outside, it's impossible to get a oil filter wrench on it. I really don't understand why they make it so difficult to take the RA part of the mount apart when the Dec part is so easy, it just seems utterly stupid. I've tried putting some m4 bolts inside the holes and running a piece of angle iron in-between but it just won't shift, ends up the bolts just bending and starting to mash the holes up. Now with attempting to loosen the retaining nut, the RA clutch is so tight that seems to be seized and impossible to release, I even managed to snap the RA clutch lever in the thread, luckily I managed to extract the loose piece of thread. This is whole charade is starting to turn in to a bit of a nightmare really and I'm getting really frustrated with it. I am tempted to going to go back to an NEQ6 and get a belt mod done on it, I never had any issues with mine many years back and looking back I wished I had never sold it as it worked perfectly. I seem to be having nothing but trouble with this AZ EQ6 and these events have just added further unnecessary frustration. Perhaps I have been unlucky. Anyone have any ideas ? My brother is an engineer and is going to have a look at it tonight but I want to avoid further hiccups. I should have really left it till then but you know what it's like, impatience sets in and you want to get the job done. If someone has successfully managed to disassemble one of these mounts, any advice would be appreciated on what steps we should take next. Mark.