My Orion Sirius EQ-G certainly benefited from the belt upgrade from Rowan Astronomy. Not only was the mount incredibly quiet, (Gone are the mashing of gears) but the tracking and guiding are greatly improved as well. Backlash has all but been eliminated. As far as the installation was concerned: honestly, the work of an evening! All the parts are precision made with the highest tolerances, making the process a snap. I did have to evacuate some Locktite from the inside of the motor bracket for the pinion shaft to fit, (as was mentioned in the comprehensive instructions) but once done, it was perfect. I would highly recommend purchasing the custom gear puller; I would not have wanted to do this without it. I have nothing but the highest praise for this kit and those that developed it. Definitely worth the investment!
Brooklyn Graham Bill
Lincoln Park Observatory

Amazing how much difference this kit makes. Fitted to an older model perfectly. Highly recommend this upgrade. Great service from FLO as usual.

Bought this for my new HEQ5 mount and it was shipped and delivered quickly. I wish I had read the part in FLO's description stating to leave the RA and DEC cables connected. My DEC connector was extremely tight and actually came away from the PCB exposing four solder tracks. Thankfully being an electrical and electronics engineer I'm a dab hand with a soldering iron. I resoldered the connector in position and actually reflowed all the other connector terminals. Fitted the Rowan kit and all tested perfectly. It's a good idea to run both axis a good few times to ensure that the belts and idler are aligned properly. If not then the belts can work their way off the pulleys.

Ordered this to upgrade my Skywatcher HEQ5. Arrived very quickly from the UK. Excellent product and fast shipping.. I also ordered the pinion extractor. Made the process very easy.

Once you carefully read the instructions and watch a couple of youtube videos the installation is easy. The parts fit well and the result is exactly as expected. The mount is a lot quieter now, the backlash is gone, the tracking improved.

I can't fault FLO for getting this to me. Every order is at my door so quickly it's almost like using Amazon. The kit looks well engineered, but I had some difficulties fitting which are probably more likely due to variations in Sky-Watchers build quality and not this kit. (Get the pinion extractor to as I can tell you now it would be very difficult to get it off otherwise). I could not get the 5.5mm from the motor as instructed as the gear would not sit close enough to the motor, I literally could not push it on any further. So I had to leave it at 6mm. The original sky-watcher gear which is replaced by the idler pulley pretty much fell out when the grub screws were removed, which is good. However the idler pulley did not fit in the hole, I cleaned the hole several times in an attempt to get it to fit and I had not joy what so ever. I had to resort to heating the plate up to get it hot so that the shaft would drop in, thankfully this worked but I shouldn't have had to do it. Only downside is how to get it out if I ever need to do so. After that everything was smooth sailing. Not had chance to check guiding yet but the mount was performing quite well at 0.8 RMS before hand with a 200pds lumped on top so I can only imagine it would improve. I only did the upgrade because I would sometimes get a very random spike in the RA for a second or so. It might fix it, it might not but the mount is so much smoother and less noisy than before which is a benefit in its own right.

This mod made my tracking a lot more accurate and reduced the grinding sounds from the original gears. For such a low price, it makes a world of difference. Be sure to get the pinion extractor as it will be almost impossible without this! I ended up buying the 3MM version for the HEQ5 Pro.

If Dave from Dark Frame Optics says doing the Rowan upgrade to the HEQ5 is one of the best things you can do for the mount, I think that says it all.

It removes another source of backlash and the upgrade is particularly useful for older noiser gears.

Rowan Belt Mod completed today on my HEQ5pro. Took about 1hr 45mins. Pretty straightforward but the somewhat expensive pinion extractor tool was a godsend. Couldn’t have managed without it. Great service as always from the people at FLO. Ordered it yesterday afternoon & it arrived this morning. Decided to do it without unplugging the motors from the motherboard as I’ve heard some recent horror stories from people who have fatally damaged the motherboard trying to remove the connectors. Didn’t have any problems doing it this way. Doesn’t seem any quieter really but my HEQ5 was only 6 months old so didn’t have the grinding gear noises that some of the older models have. Will give it a try tonight as the forecast later is for clear skies.

I would really recommend this mod for anyone with a HEQ-5 Pro mount as it really improved my guiding stability as there are no more backlash problems.
My guiding total error dropped from over 1" down to around 0.5"

Fitting the upgrade was relatively straight-forward, but I recommend watching some of the videos on YouTube on how to do it before you start if you are not used to this kind of challenges.
The main thing is to be patient and not try to hurry. I also used my phone camera to picture everything in the mount before I removed it, and this made it really easy to reassemble with the Rowan gear, e.g. showing how the motors for DEC and RA should be placed to be in their original orientation.

I would strongly recommend adding the pinion extractor if you purchase this belt mod kit! I also included an extra belt just to be safe, but as the mod went well for me, I did not need it.