Devil finds work for idle hands.....

[Astro_Baby]

I am a relentless messer abouter and cant ever stop til things are perfectly the way I want them.

Anyway I have been messing about with my HEQ5 and heres a pair of pics of as delivered and after the AB touch.

Iis got the astro-developments altitude bolts ( azimuth ones on the way ). But I also thought the mount looked a bit bland with no colors on its index marks. So these have been touched in with red ( if you do this you need to paint them white to start with and get a good white finish first which will allow the red final coat to show up better ) you need a VERY steady hand for this, then I noticed that some of the fitting screws are silver not black. So these have been swapped out for black ones and finally the all black finish was jarred by the clutch lever fitting screws which were chrome. I have enamalled these myself with a good enamel paint ( three coats ) as I couldnt find any jappened ones anywhere. The allen keys at the top of the mount have been similarly treated but dont show in the pic.

All in all it makes the mount look a little sleeker - as soon as I find the time I aim to strip it down and have a peek inside and see if anything cant be improved a bit. As I say - I just love messing about with anything mechanical and twiddling.

[A McEwan]

Hmmm. Does give it an extra 'something'!

[beamish]

Arn't those replacement bolts the dog's danglies ??

[Astro_Baby]

Yup they are and I have the Azimuth ones on order now.

The mount actually looks better in the flesh so to speak - sleeker I think. The red matches the red collar on the DEC shaft.

I keep wondering whether to take the whole thing to pieces but I suspect it might be a complete mare to do. I'm sure though there must be all sorts of bits that could do with a polish or refining a bit.

In the meantine I have some drilled out aluminimum I picked up cheap today - going to build myself an alternate rear cover for the scope with cut outs to get at the collimation adjusters and also a fan mounting for mirror cooling.

[beamish]

I'll look fwd to the piccies

[Sam]

What a great job you've done AB! move over "pimp my ride" here comes "pimp my mount".

[daz]

Stripping down the mount is fairly straightforward - have done both the 5 and 6.

Plenty of rags needed!!!

[Astro_Baby]

Was it worth it Daz ? Are there any obvious things you can do - repolishing spindles and such like ?

[MikeP]

One of the EQMOD forum members posted links to a video showing him stripping down his EQ6. The videos are the same (I think) but the former is better quality - 60.5MB versus 2.11MB for the latter.

I'm not sure if there is supposed to be sound, but I don't get any. He is Greek, so he may have decided not to include his commentary for an English speaking forum.

http://www.lunar-captures.com/UpLoads/EQ6_BIG.wmv

http://www.lunar-captures.com/UpLoads/EQ6_LOW.wmv

Mike

[Astro_Baby]

Hmmmm looks like his DEC axis was a teensy bit wobbly - mine is the same but not so bad as that. Looks simple enough. As soon as I go down to my lock up again and get my full toolset I'll give it a go.

[beamish]

AB- it seems a bit scary to start with but once you've done it, hey ! Since you've stripped and rebuilt engines-this will be a piece of P.

The improvements are noticeable, get rid of sticky yucky gloop and replace with decent lithium grease possibly replace the cheap grub screws with quality ones, then fettle it all back together.

Karlo

[beamish]

Just watched the video- can't figure out why he'd want to do it in the dark ?

Try here AB,

http://ozastro.dyndns.org/howtos.html

[Astro_Baby]

Heres the mount with the azimuth adjusters on - before and after pic again. As delivered and as she looks now.

I abandoned taking the HEQ5 to bits for now - too many bits inside and I lack the knowledge to truly know what I am doing. Unlike anything else I have taken to bits theres no manuals and no real expert knowledge to draw upon.

In my time I have built, restored, stripped and modified all kinds of things ranging from guitar pedals, syntesizers ( I used to build them for fun !!! :shock: ), guns, engines ( steam, petrol and jet ), cameras, computers etc etc but all of those have had either a serious manual or input from someone who could truly claim to be an expert. The old HEQ5 - well theres nothing. When I have some time I will go ahead and do it though but I'll document it for sure with pics and measurements for tolerances. Thats a big project though so it will have to wait for bit unlesss someone wants to donate an HEQ5 I can strip while leaving mine available for holding my telescope.

Anyway heres a pic of an HEQ5 with the astrodevelopments alt/azimuth bolts added.