Since it probably slightly pulls to the left it sat on one side of the slop mostly. No wobbling. But I’d dive right into the middle of the dead zone and ride the lightning every time I passed a truck!
Yeah get a good front stabilizer shock thing up front for steering , still check the bushings.
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The front suspension on those is notorious for getting loose and causing many of the problems you have described. The track bar is a good place to start. If it were me, I would plan on going through all the busings. Probably get it all done in a long weekend. Start spraying everything with PB blaster now.
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Yeah that is what I was afraid of. 200kmi on it so the mountain of bushings in this suspension are all probably in various stages of toast. I need to find someone with a press.
I used some washers as a temporary spacer for the upper end of one of the front shocks to stop the incessant clatter it made. Already pulled the trigger on all 4 corners Monroe OESpectrum shocks for $95 shipped (ebay, open box). Rockauto showed $80 just for the shipping 
.
I was highly suspicious of the track bar bushings based on the symptoms.. but I started reining myself in before I go wild ordering stuff without much proof or guidance.
Shooting to get it good enough that the wife feels safe to drive it. So it can be a capable spare vehicle for both of us. Including tackling inclimate weather or trailer duty incase the truck is out of commission.
Most auto zone, pep boys ect. Will rent out presses. A lot of automotive shops will also press bushings for a fair price.
You can rent a space in a telescope farm in Texas with a very dark sky.
https://www.cbsnews.com/video/telescope-farm-lets-customers-rent-a-piece-of-the-night-sky/
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I saw that when it aired. Pretty cool idea. Not sure what the cost is, but if I made that leap I’d opt for the Southern Hemisphere. I believe such opportunities exist in Chile. It’s a richer view through the Milky Way especially and grand pursuits of actual dark sky locations in North America can still be undertaken.
+1 on pb blaster
If/when you go with new bushings , I would go rubber vs urethane.
Last night was just a fantastic night for astronomy. The scope worked from 6:50 PM until around 5:30 AM split about 5 hours or so for two targets. The first was IC1848, the Soul Nebula, revolving around the west side of Polaris. The colors could be more vibrant and it’s still a bit noisy, but here you go.
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To cool
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This is amazing - This is off the scope or after PP? What Sw do you use for post process?
This time I managed to stumble through the manufacturer’s suggested workflow, then added a personal touch. The stacked file downloaded from the scope went through this software flow: Siril > Affinity > GraXpert > Affinity > Luminar AI. All that is Mac OS freeware except Luminar.
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The Grand Cherokee I recently came into posession of has a newer cheap Kenwood head unit installed. It is literal dog vomit. I cannot stand looking at it or touching it. So I ebay’d a factory Clarion unit from an 00-01 Nissan Altima ($30 shipped) and a Nissan “harness repair” plug kit to adapt the connections. One of the buttons was busted inside so I opened it up, fished out the pieces, and glued the button back together with some reinforcement. It looks the OE part, but appears to be universal single DIN form factor, and is much more basic AM/FM/CD. Each button only does one or two functions. Fingers crossed everything else still works properly on it… Alot of old cars I’ve had for some reason the rotary encoders go haywire on the factory units.
This has been a challenge to process. The Trapezium is totally blown out and better framing would have included all of the Running Man Nebula (top center). But it’s still kinda cool, I guess. The Orion Nebula (M42) as observed on 2/12/2026:
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Yes, it is very cool! I bought a coffee table book many years ago with pictures from some telescope, probably Hubble. The fact that you are taking these from your back yard in Iowa blows my mind.
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Do you guys have a preference between optical or COAX (RCA copper) for connecting components ? Working on a second cheaper system.
coax can support more bandwith than optical. The only advantage that optical has is no grounding issues but digital comunication is often imune anyway.
Noted , thanks Ken . Ill post what Im working on soon. Been pretty happy with this Fosi hardware in this one so far.
That looks pretty cool to me! I’m amazed how these scopes can track the sky, take multiple long exposures and then stitch together such detailed images.
Do you have a histogram or waveform monitor in the software? Your blacks look elevated. That shouldn’t effect the highlights that much, but it would open up the tonal range a little more.
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