Peterson Engineering Buck's Drive Tune-Up for standard drives used on 8", 10" and 12" Meade LX200 ACF and LX200R and newer 7", 8", 10" and 12" Meade and LX200GPS (LIMITED QUANTITIES)
| Article number: | BDTU1 |
| Availability: | In stock |
| Delivery time: | In Stock |
Buck's Precision Gears & Buck's Tune-Up
Upgrade & Optimize Meade telescope drives
- Significantly improve mechanical precision of both AZ and DEC drives
- Improve PEC and reduce mechanical backlash
- Replace damaged or low precision plastic gears where appropriate
- For Meade LX 200 and LX600 SCTs produced from 2001 to current
Meade’s scope drives are capable of exceptional performance but even the most current production rarely achieves the level of precision inherent in the design. In older scopes there’s a problem with the use of weak non-precision plastic gears. And with all scopes there’s an equally significant problem associated with factory level adjustments, assembly, and installation. (For one thing, all Buck’s upgrades add the capability of adjusting gear mesh – something that can’t be done at the factory with the existing design.)
Optimization of drive performance is critical for imaging. But even visual observation can be adversely effected because software can’t fully compensate for excessive mechanical backlash. Or when a drive is hanging with one mounting screw.
There are 2 basic versions of this upgrade. The Tune-Up and the Gears
The Buck’s Tune-Up kit is a minimal cost way to achieve all of the mechanical performance that your drives are capable of. It contains upgrade parts and a 17 photo-illustrated pages of inspections and adjustments.
The Buck’s Gears kit contains everything in the Buck’s Tune-Up plus super precision gears (tolerance ±0.0005 inches) to replace existing plastic gears.
The Tune-Up kit and the Gear kit each have 2 basic sub-catagories. The more common Standard version is for 8″ thru 12″ SCTs. And the other Big Scope version for the 14″ scopes and for any sized RCX400.
THIS VERSION IS THE TUNE UP KIT FOR 7-12" SCTS ONLY.
This tune-up kit further increases the precision of your drives through a series of adjustments that Meade’s assembly line did not take the time to optimize or simply cannot make.
As an example of an adjustment – Meade’s brass transfer gears are now being machined precisely, but that precision counts for nothing unless they’re properly meshed. Meade’s assembly line has no way of adjusting for proper mesh and they ship with some gears that are barely cogging (just touching tip of tooth to tip of tooth). A Peterson invented modification will reset transfer gears to a critical 100% mesh.
No one step will take your scope all the way to 1 or 2 arc-second tracking performance, but this tune-up is the largest single mechanical step that you can take in this direction.
Installation of this kit will:
1) improve the drive precision in both RA and DEC drives, reducing or eliminating transfer gear backlash.
2) correct other misaligned drive components, improving drive precision and eliminating the chance of incurring drive damage due to this misalignment.
3) If installed before the scope sees much use – allows you to detect conditions where extended use will seriously damage the scope, rendering the drive/drives inaccurate. We’re always hearing back from folks who’ve discovered loose screws or stripped screws, extra pieces of metal floating around in the gear grease, gears that are only cogging instead of meshing, drives that are misadjusted, etc.
The kit contains 17 insightful pages of step-by-step photo illustrated instructions for optimizing the declination and the azimuth drives, plus special gear grease, wrenches and parts to correct those scopes where the gears do not mesh closely but are only touching tooth tip to tooth tip in a cogging kind of action.
This drive upgrade is intended for scopes manufactured after August 2005 when Meade started using precision brass transfer gears in the drive train. The upgrade is actually a Buck’s Gears kit without the gears! DO NOT BUY THIS UPGRADE if you own a 7″, 8″, 10″ or 12″ Meade LX200GPS manufactured BEFORE August 2005 – Your scope has plastic gears and really needs the Buck’s Gears kit.
Although the instructions provided are crystal clear, this tune-up is a bit more complex than the installation of the EZ Focus kit or the EZ Clutch kit. If you had trouble with either of our other kits, or if you consider yourself to be a klutz, please either do not buy this kit or arrange for someone else to perform the tune-up for you.