Re: How often to disassemble, clean regrease?
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Anthony I have been regularly imaging with a G 11 G for five years and what I have found so far is that after about two years I was honing in on improving all different kinds of goto and tracking errors ?so I found the nylon clutches had some wear ?marks and the Gemini battery was low. So in my humble newbie opinion you should replace the gemini battery yearly and consider at least examining the clutch pads yearly As far as the grease ¡ every once in awhile I¡¯ll slather A little molybdenum product on the worm. my mount stays in a rooftop ROR where temperatures probably get ?to 100 F in the summer but I¡¯ve not found dry gears nor any grease drifting around nor any new/different noise, or sticking ?during slewing ?or anything that I could attribute to needing disassembly or regreasing So other than replacing the battery yearly (or at least keeping an eye on the voltage ) and examining the clutch pads ¡ I am in the wait and see what happens camp. The mount continues to work flawlessly - for me about one second RMS error with a piggyback guide scope
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On Jun 17, 2021, at 8:51 PM, John Kmetz <jjkmetz54@...> wrote:
?Yes, Anthony. This has been hashed through many, many times before. Suggest you just plug regrease or relubricate in the upper right hand search box.?
I did mine after 3 years and after I noticed the grease was leaking onto the clutch plates and also seeping out of the gear covers after a long hot summer. Be prepared for a lengthy procedure and have the right lubricants, cleaners, and spare parts on hand like new worm bearings and Belville washers. MyG11G has the non-spring loaded worm gears and resetting positions and tensions was a bit of a chore. It took me about 5 or 6 worm adjustments and nights out until I got guiding back to satisfactory. Have a clean work place available where you can catch small parts, a camera ready for each disassembly step. Then you will need Superlube to relube everything but the worm to ring gears, which seem to need Jetlube MP-50 or moly-based wheel caliper grease. This final worm to ring adjustments are the most tricky and are covered in the Losmandy videos.
Lastly pick a day or two where you can focus on what your are doing without time pressure as you will need to properly degrease, relube, reassemble, and adjust all the gearing correctly. Then ask yourself too if you want to just get back to normal or do the Michael Herman Belville washer modifications which you should read up on.?
Expect 8-16 hours over serval days to clean, relube, reassemble, and retune the tensions. After you do it once, the other drive or future rebuilds should come more easily.
Good luck.
John?
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Ron