ATM Restoring a 6"coude- Another question

[Assaf Berwald <meshoamam@yahoo.com>]

Greetings to the groups,
At first Id like to thanks again to all those who
replied my previous posts about the restoration of the
6" Wachter couder refractor. I was amazed by the
amount of messages arrived.
Ive discussed the observatory manager and he told that
the fungus between the objective lenses have been
sitting there for many years already and arent new
there.
My decision is , since theres no reason to rush, is to
leave the objective assembly intact for now until I
gain more (or, better to say, "ANY") experience with
dealing with achromat objectives. Only once I feel
more confident about this issue will I get it opened
and cleaned.

The GEM of this scope consists of a 80 cm's long, 3.5
cm in diameter steel bar for the RA counterweight. I
estimate the counterweight to be about 50-60 kg's.
Usually it was placed about 10 cm's from the far end
of the bar. In order to minimize the space taken by
the instrument (the scope is to be mounted in a rather
small balcony which also used for public
observations.)I was thinking about replacing the
exsisting bar with a shorter replacement and also to
put a heavier counterweight which will then be
positioned closer to the RA axis. 
My question is: any idea how much more weight can I
add to the mount without damaging the bearings? I was
thinking about shortening the bar so that it will be
about 50 cm's and therefore the counterweight should
be , I guess, (still havent calculated since I havent
yet measured the weight of the exsisting
counterweight) about 80 kilos.

The scope will be mounted without its original
finderscope which weighs about 5 kg's.

The mount is very rigid but since Im not an engineer I
cannot estimate it for sure. I will try getting a few
photos of the telescope for the folks here to see, if
needed.
Thanks again for the help,
Assaf B.







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