Potential reason for stallingl and newly found electrical issues - Paramount

Steve Bisque suggestion that the stalling problem might be electrical in nature versus a mechanical issue and to take a look at the RA motor connections definitely showed some wear and tear and an area where the problem could be caused from.

Upon taking off the left side RA cover, (pully side of motor), I noticed immediately that the serial signal lines running from the bottom connector plate up through the RA tube, had chafed the serial cable so bad that there were bare lines showing. Here is an image of that area. No wonder the serial ports did not work for me!

One of Steve's questions dealt with whether the RA motor and the Encoder wires were bundled together or separately. They are bundled separately. Here is a image of the two separate cable bundles.

(I certainly wish the camera would focus on the correct area that I want photographed! I had set the camera to focus on more than one area and so it would try and find an average area to grab, fixed that in the next two shots)

Further investigation moving the RA back and forth showed that the heavy cable that runs up the RA pipe is rubbing against the two RA motor/encoder cables and was stretching them when the counter shaft is on the east side. There is a fair amount of motor cable available and I moved them slightly, powered the mount up, reset the RA slew speed to "default-90%" from the 40% I had set it at, and ran the mount back and forth across the area it normally stalls. No problems what so ever.

Initial conclusions from this first investigative step is that the cables that run up the RA shaft are causing movement in the connections that attach to the RA motor and Encoder. Here is a couple of pictures of the cable when it passes the connector area:

Image #1 - Rubbing against the motor cables

Image #2 - Rubbing against the Encoder cable