EQ6 Taper bearings

[blinky]

I’m replacing all the bearings in my EQ6 and bought generic taper bearings for a few pounds each, just now thinking, should I have paid extra for SKF ones or as these dont do much work will generic ones be fine?  I’m going to get SKF ones for all other bearings BTW, was just these seemed a good price and i jumped at them!

[Dr_Ju_ju]

You get what you pay for......

[blinky]

4 minutes ago, Dr_Ju_ju said:

You get what you pay for......

Fair point!  Think i will go and buy proper SKF ones then

[Bizibilder]

How many revolutions will your EQ6 do in its lifetime?  I suspect your generic bearings will be good for a few thousand rpm for many hours running time.  If you install your bearings (any type) correctly and with the correct preload (i.e minimal play) and keep them properly lubricated, they should outlast the mount by a considerable margin.

[Skipper Billy]

Its not all about longevity and wear resistance - you are paying more for the tolerances they are made to. I would trust SKF/FAG to have much greater accuracy/smaller tolerances than many other bearing manufacturers.

Worth every penny in my mind.

[blinky]

Realised that one of the 2 is an SKF one, so I only need to buy the RA axis bearing

[blinky]

Found an SKF one on eBay, it’s actually a Nissan spare, I think it’s the wheel bearing but it’s brand new and the correct part number and has skf stamped on it

[MarcusH]

No harm in going for the best when replacing, if nothing else than at least the peace of mind. I ended up replacing only the worm bearings with SKFs when I did a stripdown and regrease of my AZ-EQ6.My reasoning was that the worm bearings are the only ones to do more than a revolution during a session. All the other bearings won't do a whole revolution in their lifetime....

Getting somewhat constant 0.6 - 1.0 arc sec guided RMS now, I found it hard to believe that the accuracy would have improved enough to compensate for the outlay of changing all of the bearings.

[blinky]

The EQ6 I have is very old and I don’t think well looked after, that’s my reasoning for a full strip, degrease,replacement of bearings and belt mod. At least then I know I won’t get anymore out of it. Tbh though I get around 1.3 arc secs guiding as it is so maybe won’t see a massive improvement. My dec axis is bad though, has more backlash than I would like