Help!

[MahlerMoonMan]

Hi folks

I'm really struggling with my German Equatorial mount. It's an Orion SkyView Pro mount, a manual German Equatorial. I have fitted an electronic drive (Orion TrueTrack single-axis drive system) to the RA axis, but even before the RA axis has been very 'stiff' and difficult to turn. Compared to the Declination axis which is easy and smooth, the RA is awful, i just can't operatre it. When the drive is engaged it tracks beautifully though, for nearly an hour the other night i kept the moon in my low power field of view, fairly well centered ....? I really need to sort this out as trying to locate objects is far too difficult .... Should it be so stiff with the drive attached? The drive manual says i should be able to manually operate my mount just by unlocking it and turning by hand, but as it is there is no way i'm moving very much at all in RA .... And the slow motion doesn't work in RA now either!! Can anyone advise me how i can sort this please? Please appreciate, i am no engineer! I'm not very technically minded at all!

Many thanks,

Donaldo

[Jiggy 67]

Sounds like you need to strip it down and give it a good clean. How old is it?? I can't comment on your mount but the EQ5 and other SW mounts have a small grub screw that alters the amount the worm gear meshes with the other gear, yours may be meshed together to tightly