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I forgot to mention yesterday, as long as you have a Newtonian, you should not be upset that you have to collimate every session, it is just the instrument reaching its limits, not a flaw in design ( I noticed that you wrote in one comment that the collimation was holding while you took the scope out). Regarding my telescope, the secondary mirror looses collimation almost all the time, and that is to be expected from the physics point of view. Although I have changed several sets of grub screws in 4 years due to overtightening, the secondary mirror is almost all the time out of collimation, even after parking the scope in home position(sometimes accidentally).  The spider support is made out of steel and, though tightened, is still flexible up to a point, the secondary is not counter balanced in the spider, and the gravity acts differently at different angles allowing minute bending of the spider under mirror's weight. Besides this, the thermal expansion and contraction make the collimation screws give way eventually, and the secondary should be hold in position by a material with a certain degree of elasticity to prevent pinching of the secondary.

Anyway, do keep us posted, I would love to hear what is your experience with the upgrades you did.     

I forgot to mention yesterday, as long as you have a Newtonian, you should not be upset that you have to collimate every session, it is just the instrument reaching its limits, not a flaw in design ( I noticed that you wrote in one comment that the collimation was holding while you took the scope out). Regarding my telescope, the secondary mirror looses collimation almost all the time, and that is to be expected from the physics point of view. Although I have changed several sets of grub screws in 4 years due to overtightening, the secondary mirror is almost all the time out of collimation, even after parking the scope in home position(sometimes accidentally).  The spider support is made out of steel and, though tightened, is still flexible up to a point, the secondary is not counter balanced in the spider, and the gravity acts differently at different angles allowing minute bending of the spider under mirror's weight. Besides this, the thermal expansion and contraction make the collimation screws give way eventually, and the secondary should be hold in position by a material with a certain degree of elasticity to prevent pinching of the secondary.

Anyway, do keep us posted, I would love to hear what is your experience with the upgrades you did.     

What you say about the spider makes sense. I ordered a heavier duty one from AstroSystems that has two attachment points on the end of each vane and is made of heavier duty steel - I am hoping that will keep the larger secondary mirror I ordered stable..... I'm ok having to collimate once I put the OTA on the mount but would really be frustrated if it wouldn't hold collimation through a night of imaging/tracking.

So far I have just one image with the new setup and I posted it in the main thread. Not sure if you saw that or not. I felt it came out really well. Nice round stars all the way out to the edge!