Bogen Tripod : Swing arm is extremly tight.
 

Ok, have a Bogen 503 head and the pan arm on it is extremly tight... like where i cant tighten it or loosen. Took a wrench to get it off. I thought perhaps it somehow got knocked unaligned.

I couldnt get it back on by hand. Tried both sides... do i just need to grease the s*&t out of it with WD40?

are you talking about the screw in the toothed connection or are you talking about getting the handle itself out of the connection?

If it's the screw perhaps the threads either male or female need to have a die rerun thru them. If it's the handle coming out of the connection there really is not reason to do that but there is a very small rubber washer buried in the recess of the connection around the screw. Give the screw a good yank and then twist it until you can se the washer. Roll it off the screw and your all set.

Don

Hi Nick...............
 

The design of the pan handle bolt mount on the 503 leaves quite a bit to be desired.

There is a shallow groove machined in the handle to accomodate the tightening bolt and allow it to turn.

Unfortunately, it is so manufactured that it is very easy for the bolt thread to "grab" the side of the groove and pull an ummachined section into hard contact with said bolt.

This can be seen by the pan arm moving out of the sleeve as the bolt is tightened, and back into it when loosened.

The only solution I ever found was to keep a good grip on the handle when tightening the knob, and if it snagged, to back off the bolt, push the handle in a mm or so, hold it whilst tightening the knob again.

A complete pain, but not one I could find an elegant engineering solution for.


CS

Still havent tried WD40 yet. Think that will do anything?

I bring a wrench with me now and just tighten/loosen like that. It's sad. But honestly I never need to 'quickly' break down or set up. Need to get a cloth to put around the teeth of the wrench as its diggin into the the knob.