New photos/text at:
<http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/Meade-Uncensored/files/LX200-OTA-disassembly\
/>
and/or
<http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/sct-user/files/LX200-OTA-disassembly/>

Boring the fork arm with a $10 hole saw. Aluminum is soft. This hole saw was
ground down to a smaller OD. The resulting holes would be enlarged more
precisely with a $11 cylinder hone on an electric drill.

The hole is only about 0.01 inch off-center with respect to the thick section of
the casting. That is no problem because there is so much room/slop in the way
the forks are attached to the base. As others have mentioned previously...you
see voids/bubbles in the castings when you bore out the forks for roller
bearings.

Cylinder hone is used to expand the hole diameter gradually. My goal was to
make the hole about 0.003 smaller than the bearing...heat the fork arm with a
small propane torch, and install the bearing.

Roller bearing installed. Note that I bored entirely through the casting. I
did not leave an inner face/hard stop for the bearing installation. These
bearings are now snugly held by the casting because the hole was undersize, and
I heated the casting. Also, the bearings only bear radial loads...the thrust
bearings will bear all axial loads.

Both aluminum stub axles had a 'ridge' of larger diameter at their base.
Because of that I could not slide the steel sleeve all the way onto the shaft.
A few minutes with a dremel tool removed the ridges.

Steel sleeve in place on stub axle, bonded with blue locktite. The sleeve is
longer than the stub axle. For the non-motor fork arm this is not a factor, but
I'll need to grind the other sleeve shorter so that I can bolt the inner clutch
plate to the end of the stub axle.

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Tom Krajci
Cloudcroft, New Mexico
http://picasaweb.google.com/tom.krajci

Center for Backyard Astrophysics (CBA)
http://cbastro.org/ CBA New Mexico

American Association of Variable Star
Observers (AAVSO): KTC http://www.aavso.org/
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