Small Astrograph setup

Here is a pic of my new setup I've been working on the past month. Orion 4.25" (114mm) F3.5 newtonian with rings and dovetal mounted on the Celestron CG-5 equitorial mount. I added the Celestron dual axis drive system, some old knobs from http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vd3d3LmZvY3Vza25vYnMuY29t , my LXD55 polar scope and also did more mods to the DeWalt construction tripod to make it very rigid. I used Birch to make the eyepiece tray- leg speader and I am in the process of making a wheely bar system to roll it out and level the scope. I disassembled the mount completely then soaked and cleaned the original grease from all the interior parts, deburred the wormgear, and relubed all of the bearing components with white lithium grease which the manufacturer should use. After that I made critical adjustments to the wormgears and now the mount motions are smooth as butter with no backlash at all and the tracking is dead on. This is turning out to be a really fun project!

Now my next project on this system is to solder in an ST-4 usb autoguider port which I will obtain from http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vd3d3LnNob2VzdHJpbmdhc3Ryb25vbXkuY29t . My 102mm Maksutov will be mounted piggyback as a guide scope as soon as I get a set of mounting rings. The Maksutov alone is quite a nice scope giving nice images of planets, the moon, and brighter nebula. It is also excellent for splitting double stars. This whole project came about by a myspace friend ( Dave )sending me the EQ head at no charge or this project would have never started. Since I had open heart surgery I have ALOT of idle time and lack of funds, so this project was just what the doctor ordered! I can't thank you enough Dave.The info for the CG-5 mount at http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vd3d3LmFzdHJvbm9teWJveS5jb20= is priceless. There is step by step instructions there for doing the mount tune up for the CG5 and LXD55/75 mounts. If you have one of these mounts I would recommend this project.