What are the benefits of the Rowan belt upgrade?

[Swoop1]

Apart from noise reduction, what are the benefits of the Rowan belt upgrade for an HEQ5Pro?

I have got to decide how to allocate some funds I have just come into.

[Jamgood]

I bought a used HEQ5pro from someone on here and it was a decent mount to start with. Regular guiding of 0.8 which is more than acceptable but in my mind, I was always going to do the belt mod to it. A week later it was done and it now guides at 0.4/0.5.  How much of a difference you'll notice with those numbers I really don't know but I know I have nice tight round stars and that's what's important.

The sound was never an issue for me as the mount is outside and I'm not but the noise reduction was huge. Those gears are noisy little buggers.

Slewing is not really any different but settling after slewing is much nicer. Tracking is much smoother. No sudden spikes during corrections.

I say it's a worthy upgrade to make the mount the best it can possibly be without sending it away for some crazy hyper tuning or something.

If you do go for it, buy the pinion extractor as well. It'll save you a lot of time and you won't have to put much cash in the swear jar. Took me 30 minutes to do both motors after watching a few video's so I knew what I was doing well ahead of time. (Before I owned the mount in fact)

[malc-c]

Reduction in noise,  less backlash, smoother running, and higher precision goto's are the main benefits.

I was the first to modify an HEQ5 a decade ago (the original test and development thread is probably still on the site somewhere), using off the shelf parts.  The drawback was with off the shelf parts it was impossible to match the default ratio to enable it to work with the handset.  But as I use EQMO a 4:1 ration was possible, so for me (and those in a similar set up) this worked.  Dave form Rowan has his own CNC business and was able to overcome the issue of a small enough motor pulley for the stock gearing by machining it as a single piece form a solid bar of aluminium.   The rest is history.  Rowan have sold hundreds (possibly 1000's ) of kits since.  The one advantage my home built conversion has over the Rowan kit is using a 4:1 ratio the harmonics for PEC are more regular so PEC is an easier process.

Here's my original video from 2012