16" LX200 Gear Cleaning

After spending several nights seeing jumps in our images we decided to take our 16" off its pier
and attempt to clean the gears. This pictorial shows several images from this process.

To get to the RA gear you have to take off the OTA, Fork Arms and then the Drive Base.

  

To get to the RA gear you either have to take off the top black nut which requires a special tool or take the bottom
plate off. This is just held on by some small allen screws. Note: Do not take out the philips screw at the bottom. Its
holding the electronics to the plate.

Once inside this is what you have. You can see the drive, the RA gear coming out from the casting,
the main board and the back of the control panel. We removed the main board. This is easy as all the
connectors are socketed and easily removed. Just remember where they go back.

NOTE: be sure to mark exactly where the worm gear is oriented in respect to RA gear
so as not to loose the PEC setting.

We pulled out the drive. You can see the outline from the gear where the excess grease was deposited.

Here is the RA gear. We cleaned both the worm and the gear with mineral spirits and then alcohol.
This got the all the grease off.

We put on a light coat of White Lithium Grease and reasembled
the scope in the same manner we took it apart.

It still too early in our testing to tell if we made any improvement.

If you have any questions contact me at: <jaalexcedar-astronomers.org>

Jason Alexander, President
Cedar Amateur Astronomers