Don I would do anything to not take the lens out of the outer barrel... The grooves on the inner barrel are a nightmare to realign. I did the teardown for this camera, its my favourite camera, but kodak make things tricky! Take a look at the teardown, I'll take another look at some spare lens I've got and see how to go about it. Won't be until much later today tho. I'd leave it otherwise, last thing you want is the dust moving and ruining your zoom