It has the benefit that it is easily removable to attach a more solid foundation. I shall order the motor and think about how best to add a DSLR to the mount. Maybe drill a home and use a single bolt directly in the dovetail plate, or find a better camera mount.
Taken a more detailed look at it after removing the tube clamps. I took the declination adjustment apart. It is solidly built but the key part that is shoddy is the internals. These have greased friction bearings (bushes with a plastic slip washer) inside the machined casting. Unfortunately the bushes for the bearings are at one end a cheap penny washer and at the other an aluminium billet that has been formed but not finished after pressing. These have a fair amount of slop. The housing itself is well done and finished appropriately. Someone with a lathe could make a very nice job of a smooth set of bearings internally. Hopefully this will be sufficient for what I want to do. It does have a very sticky grease on it - I presume a shipping grease rather than one which should be used.
So if it does not work out as it is, a bit of metal work if I can find someone keen to fettle me some new bushes, possibly even find real bearings of the right size to use.
I can see why David A was so sniffy about it, but there is the capacity to build something that works well. It is very irritating when what could be a good piece of kit is spoiled by a bit of slapdash assembly. The slop at each bearing is about 0.25-0.5mm, sufficient that if it was a headset on a bike you would be wanting to get it looked at.
