Just one more little thing. Before I even touched my mount, I made sure I had a complete understanding of what the factory settings were.
I wanted to make sure I had a reference point to refer to when doing any adjustments or modifications.
I believe this to be very important when working on a mount like this that has so many different adjustments and modifications available.
It adds quite a bit of time to find the right settings, and it cuts into your imaging time, but I believe it works out in the long term.
When changing too many things at one time you can really get this mount out of whack.
Here's just a quick reference picture of how I have mine currently set up. Once I get the basic things set up, I only have to touch one thing at a time in the field if needed.
Makes it easier to find out if I have to go back to the start and retry something else.
I keep my worm spring at 8.5 mm, as recommended by Brian, and that seems to be the correct setting.
When I went by the video on how to set your spring-loaded worm, I believe the RA was around there but the DEC was way off. It was not 8.5 from the factory.
So now I just keep it at 8.5mm with blue Loctite.
However, I'm still wondering about the setting of back off screw. When you're turning the gears, do you stop the back off screw when the gear is just start to get tighter or when they get tight.
There such a fine line in that setting.
David Malanick