Background Story

When opening the scope, you will have to "remove" a white 14mm-bolt made of plastics. It is the counterpart of the silverish AZ-drive fastened/losened lever in the base of the instrument. It prevents the whole arrangment down there to turn around when moving the lever. Problem: It also prevents you from opening the scope for repair, inspection and better distributing the grease applied to the gear.

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Ups!

I had to break the bolt since Meade decided to glue (!) it in it's thread at the upper base (see the black stuff around the crack). After having all inspections and grease redistributions done (as advised at Weasner's page) I tried to fix the "bolt problem" with some ultra-strong two phase epoxy-glue... was OK for about two weeks using the telescope, but that already was it... Forget about it, waste of time!

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Now?

The bolt itself appears to be made of quite an amount of  wall-thickness. why not adding a small steel rod to stabilise the rotation of the first half of the bolt to the second one? When considering that the fastening-bolt Meade built in to "actuate" the base-break can define an inner limit to an additional piece of artwork, the original thread being the second limit, there obviously is very little space for a steel-rod of 3mm in diameter to escape.
A bore was quickly applied to both parts of the broken white bolt. I used about 2cm of 3mm steel-rod to mechanically join the white bolt again, thereby installing it's function but keeping it in two parts.
I would not advise to break anything, but give you some hope that things can be fixed....

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