Jerry,

I did look at replacement focusers, and, well, my budget isn't up
for a $100+ focuser -- need it all for gas to get to dark sky sites
(durn Jeep at 14mpg, thinking about dumping it soon).

The current focuser has worked well enough for me -- I may just
remove it to see if I can't reverse the tube or graft a section of
the teeth from way up the tube where they're never used. All my
focusing tends to be within the first two inches of the six-inch
drawtube. I'm only missing a total of three "teeth" from the
drawtube, two in one spot, one in the another -- where it happened
to be seated when it got dumped off the porch.

I've found the drawtube on the Meade 4504 is the same, but it's
about three inches shorter since it goes on a Newt. Pretty sure the
DS70 or DS80 focuser would be the same 2" chromed plastic drawtube,
so one of those would work as well. Anyone?

Tony M
central OH

--- In Meade-DS-Telescopes@yahoogroups.com, Jerry <crazyj1251@...>
wrote:
>
> Tony,
> Sounds to me like a blessing in disguise. Why not just
> replace that cheap plastic geared focuser with a nice
> crayford while you are at it. There are nice one and
> two speed crayford focusers for sale at scopestuff,
> agena and a few other places for under $150. Those
> stock focusers are junk and a good crayford will
> really fix that scope.
> Jerry in Arizona
>
>