HEQ5 Belt Mod - To Mod or not to Mod

[daemon]

Apologies if I am starting a new thread for a question that may have been asked before, but here goes:-

I have an HEQ5 mount (in a remote location) that is relatively new, around a year since it was delivered. I have only had the opportunity to use it maybe 5 or 6 times for short sessions so it can be considered virtually brand new. When slewing it is certainly noisier than my EQ6R Pro (that I use at home) but then I would expect that. I have only used it for short imaging sessions (unguided so far) and so I have not been able to properly assess its tracking capabilities. So my main question is as follows:-

• Is there anything to be gained from performing the Rowan belt mod now or should I wait and use the mount as it is now until the tracking/guiding starts to deteriorate?

I hope to be able to use the mount a lot more soon and want to be able to guide for long sessions. Currently I only have an ED80 for the mount so it is not particularly challenged by weight. Thanks for reading.

Cheers,

Steve

 

 

[Anthonyexmouth]

I wouldn't be without the belt mod, one of the best upgrades you can do. I had noticably less back lash and worth the £100 for the peace and quiet. 

[Stargazer33]

I wish I could do a belt mod on my CGEM as the backlash is horrible and as for the noise! I've turned the custom slew rate right down to keep the mount as quiet as possible for the neighbours. I'm going to do a DIY hypertune soon to try to improve both problems. I've got all the bearings; now I just need the grease, wet and dry, IPA etc. and to make a couple of pin spanners and I'm good to go.

[daemon]

33 minutes ago, Anthonyexmouth said:

I wouldn't be without the belt mod, one of the best upgrades you can do. I had noticably less back lash and worth the £100 for the peace and quiet. 

Cheers Anthony! I guess I was wondering mainly whether it was something that people only consider when the mount starts to degrade (i.e  milk it for now) or whether it was an upgrade to be considered from the get go. From your reaction I guess it has benefits regardless of how old the mount is. Cheers

[Anthonyexmouth]

1 minute ago, daemon said:

Cheers Anthony! I guess I was wondering mainly whether it was something that people only consider when the mount starts to degrade (i.e  milk it for now) or whether it was an upgrade to be considered from the get go. From your reaction I guess it has benefits regardless of how old the mount is. Cheers

I modded mine within weeks of taking it out of the wrapper. 

[daemon]

1 minute ago, Anthonyexmouth said:

I modded mine within weeks of taking it out of the wrapper. 

Cheers! That's a nice clear opinion. 🙂 A plus point for the mod! 

[newbie alert]

13 hours ago, Stargazer33 said:

I wish I could do a belt mod on my CGEM as the backlash is horrible and as for the noise! I've turned the custom slew rate right down to keep the mount as quiet as possible for the neighbours. I'm going to do a DIY hypertune soon to try to improve both problems. I've got all the bearings; now I just need the grease, wet and dry, IPA etc. and to make a couple of pin spanners and I'm good to go.

Most of the noise is from the gears in a cgem, and the backlash is from the worm adjustment

[Craig a]

I belt modded my neq6 about 6 months ago, best thing I did with this mount, smooth slewing, more responsive less noisy and less backlash, well worth doing 

Edited June 11, 2020 by Craig a

[JamesF]

I've belt-modded both a HEQ5 and NEQ6 in the last couple of months.  I've not really had enough time to put them through their paces properly yet, especially the NEQ6, but the HEQ5 does seem like a big improvement from first impressions.  Getting the worm backlash sorted on the NEQ6 seems to be something that needs to have some time spent on it, but with the HEQ5 the worms aren't touched so that's not an issue.

The one thing I've often heard repeated about the belt mod is that it does require that the payload be well-balanced.

James

[Neil H]

Hi I did my HEQ5 as soon as I could get my hands on the kit it's a No brainer it's so much better, so I was told if your going to image with it the polar alignment needs to be spot on as the belts remove the backlash 

I do polar alignment as normal and it tracks spot on and targets are spot on

[daemon]

Thanks to all for your comments! I'm sure I'll be going ahead with the belt mod before too long. These replies have helped confirm that it's worthwhile despite the relative newness of the mount.

Clear skies!