Eqm35 pro bearing upgrade

[labtech1122]

Hi, I've seen a video of someone stripping down and replacing the plastic washers in the eqm35 mount and replacing them with bearings. 

Has anyone done this before?

They have listed the parts needed for this upgrade (it's a really good video BTW with a very detailed way of stripping the mount)

[wimvb]

Don’t know about the eq35, but I’ve done and undone the upgrade for my eq3-pro. The problem is that the bearings are thicker than the teflon washers they are meant to replace, and the worm gear end block doesn’t really fit to the housing anymore. I didn’t see an improvement with the bearings, so removed them again.

[labtech1122]

On 21/02/2023 at 11:31, wimvb said:

Don’t know about the eq35, but I’ve done and undone the upgrade for my eq3-pro. The problem is that the bearings are thicker than the teflon washers they are meant to replace, and the worm gear end block doesn’t really fit to the housing anymore. I didn’t see an improvement with the bearings, so removed them again.

OK great, thanks. What lube did you use to assemble it again?

[wimvb]

5 hours ago, labtech1122 said:

OK great, thanks. What lube did you use to assemble it again?

"Run of the mill" Lithium grease. The first time I stripped down the eq3 I used spray on lithium grease, but I found that the mount actually needs a fair amount of thicker grease to work properly. Where more high end mounts have bearings, the eq3 and eq5 have teflon shims and grease to reduce friction. In other words, these mounts need the "black chinese gunk" to work properly.

[jif001]

I made this mod and am also unconvinced about its effectiveness, but I’ve left the bearings in place. They are thicker than the fibre washers but a few strategically-placed metal washers on the worm carrier bolts allow alignment of the worm and gear and it works fine. I’ll never really know if it made a significant improvement because it was hotly followed by another mod that I know did make a significant improvement, but it’s also possible that the two mods together gave me that result. See the link below.

 

 

Edited May 4, 2023 by jif001

[bosun21]

On 23/02/2023 at 23:32, wimvb said:

Where more high end mounts have bearings, the eq3 and eq5 have teflon shims

The EQ5 uses dual bearings and not Teflon shims. I have re greased my EQ5 to make it smoother, but not by much.

[wimvb]

3 hours ago, bosun21 said:

The EQ5 uses dual bearings and not Teflon shims. I have re greased my EQ5 to make it smoother, but not by much.

I stand corrected. I don’t have the eq5, but I had a vague memory of reading somewhere that it had. Good thing you corrected that.

[newbie alert]

Unless the eq35 is on a totally different system to it's larger brothers, certain nylon washers act as spacers to align the worm and ring gear...  And 9x out of 10 they're factory misaligned...anyone that has done a hypertune will know this, although plenty of u tubers use this term for simply replacing the bearings, therefore people that follow it also say it's hypertuned.. 

You can't get a bearing as thin as a nylon washer, unless it's in a stack of say 30-40 ... Needle bearings are thinner but not as effective as a ball bearing race

Anyway, adding a bearing will misalign the whole axis, and almost definitely crush when you tightened the locking nut..

[jannick]

The upgrade is relatively straightforward, but it is important to be careful when disassembling the mount. The plastic washers are easily damaged, so it is important to take your time and be gentle.

[jannick]

On 07/05/2023 at 17:16, newbie alert said:

Unless the eq35 is on a totally different system to it's larger brothers, certain nylon washers act as spacers to align the worm and ring gear...  And 9x out of 10 they're factory misaligned...anyone that has done a hypertune will know this, although plenty of u tubers use this term for simply replacing the bearings, therefore people that follow it also say it's hypertuned.. 

You can't get a bearing as thin as a nylon washer, unless it's in a stack of say 30-40 ... Needle bearings are thinner but not as effective as a ball bearing race

Anyway, adding a bearing will misalign the whole axis, and almost definitely crush when you tightened the locking nut..

You are correct. The nylon washers in the EQ35 mount act as spacers to align the worm and ring gear. The washers are also very thin, so it is difficult to find bearings that are thin enough to replace them.

If you were to replace the nylon washers with bearings, it is likely that the worm and ring gear would become misaligned. This would cause the mount to track poorly and could damage the gears.

The proper way to "hypertune" an EQ35 mount is to carefully adjust the nylon washers until the worm and ring gear are properly aligned. This can be a time-consuming process, but it is the only way to ensure that the mount will track accurately.

Edited August 30, 2023 by jannick

[jif001]

See my comment above regarding the placement of metal washers on the worm carrier bolts to deal with the misalignment. The mount continues to track very well and accurately, much better than it did with the nylon washers (although this is not necessarily a direct result of the bearing mod - see my other comments on that). A clear conclusion though is that any misalignment can be corrected with a bit of effort, and probably better than the original factory setup.

[JeromeW]

I also tried the Hyper-tune. It didn't help, thrust bearings are not enough.