Buck's Precision Gears

To 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

DRIVE UPGRADE FOR MEADE 7″ – 12″ LX200R & LX200 GPS TELESCOPES

Due to the failures and inaccuracies associated with plastic transfer gears, Meade converted to precision brass gears in late 2005. If your scope has brass gears, you don’t need the gears in the Buck’s Gears kit but you will greatly benefit from Buck’s Tune-Up. The Tune-Up is essentially a Buck’s Gears upgrade without the gears, and 50% of the tracking improvements associated with Buck’s Gears kit is related to the tune-up adjustments to your drives that are incorporated into the Buck’s Gears kit. As an example of an adjustment – Meade’s brass gears may have been 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). If your scope is equipped with brass transfer gears the Buck’s Drive Tune-Up kit will allow you to tune your scope to its full mechanical precision limits.

Improve drive precision by replacing the molded plastic gears in your drive train with precision machined high strength stainless steel gears. This kit not only upgrades and adjusts the scope’s gears; it and addresses and tunes the full mechanical drive system for both axes.

Installation of this kit will:

1) improve precision in both RA and DEC drives minimizing Periodic Error Correction (PEC) that software can only partially address. Reduce or eliminating transfer gear backlash. Our Quality 10 precision cut gears hold dimensional tolerances of ±.0005″, while the molded Nylon gears they replace are no better than Quality 8 with a tolerance of ±.002″

2) Reduce or eliminate transfer gear backlash by achieving optimum mesh of transfer gears.

3) reduce wear on and prevent damage to the scope’s main worm gears by adjustments that assure positive worm to worm gear engagement. The worm on this drive has a propensity to lift and partially disengage when under load – resulting in some inaccuracy and abnormal wear on the gears themselves. In severe cases gears can completely disengage damaging the primary drive gear and producing audible “chatter”.

4) eliminate the tendency of the plastic transfer gear teeth to break off when slewing the telescope at high speed, in cold temperatures, or when slewing a scope that is heavily loaded with accessories or is out of balance.

5) eliminate the tendency of the motor transfer gears to loosen on their axle, due to use of a larger securing bolt capable of much higher locking torque. Or the tendency of the plastic worm transfer gear to become loose and slip when drive torque is applied.

For a detailed independent analysis of improvement in Periodic Error see Geof Wingham’s study:

What do our customers say?

This kit contains 16 pages of very detailed step-by-step photo illustrated instructions for upgrading the declination and azimuth drives, 2 pairs of precision stainless steel gears, O rings and precision bushings, special gear grease, wire wraps, top quality hex wrenches and a drill bit.

Although the instructions provided are crystal clear, the installation of this kit is more complex than that 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 installation for you.

Unsure of what you need? Click the button for details before ordering.

$149.99 plus shipping

To order your Buck’s big scope Gears please select order button for proper shipping destination.

Ship within USA
$149.99+$9.65 postage = $159.64

Ship to Canada
$149.99 + $25.10 postage = $175.09

Ship to all other countries
$149.99 + $32.15 postage = $182.14