Following the instructions in Bisque’s video, I removed the Declination worm block, cleaned all the grease out of the drive gear and the worm gear, and re-greased. Because of our winters, I used MolyKote 33, which is rated for much lower temperatures than the standard Lubriplate 103 that Bisque normally uses.
Some photos of the cleaning process, but I forgot to take photos of the re-greasing:
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- OTA removed from mount
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- Underside of mounting plate, the cover for the Dec worm block, 4 screws to be removed.
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- Removing the cover from the Dec worm block
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- Dec worm block removed from mount, motor cable not disconnected yet
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- Dec worm block set aside
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- Cleaning old grease out of Dec drive gear with a clean dry toothbrush
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- Cleaned Dec drive gear
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- Cleaning old grease out of the worm gear
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- Clean worm gear
I then reassembled the Dec worm block into the mount and reset the cam stop and spring plungers to factor spec, and ran the Dec motor through 10 end-to-end exercise runs. I ended up backing the spring plungers off 1/8-turn more than the lower end to eliminate a slight binding noise I could hear in the exercise. (The manual specifies 2.5 to 3.5 turns back from bottom. I ended up using 2-5/8 back from bottom.)
Next I’ll do the same procedure with the RA block.