Been lucky to get my AM5 from the large shipment from last month. There's a lot to like and not like about it. Like most, I picked up the TC40 when it was a freebie. It's a nice tripod, but not too happy about pulling out that hex wrench to disassemble everything. I sort of wished it was tool less.
Being a tinkerer, I set out to see what can be done to eliminate or at least reduce the amount of use of that wrench. The low hanging fruit was to replace the socket cap screws on the head with equivalent M6 thumbscrew (M6 x 15mm) and reused the locking washers.
https://www.amazon.c...duct/B07KPGKFSS
This of course create one problem, these will work inside the 70mm pier extensions, but they won't work on the bottom TC40 plate. Plus these will never work when trying to put 2 of the 70mm piers together. Well, doing some dry fitting, it looks like if I use longer screws and a spacer I think I can. The solution was to get 25mm version of the thumbscrews and make a 10mm spacer.
Of course I didn't stop there, more to come...