PSA: This friction nut can ruin your day!

[Srick]

Tighten up, route, loosen up, remove. What's the point of the lever?

Boy, that’s a good question. Years ago I had a clunky Sears router that required you to rotate a threaded ring (around the outside of the router) to adjust the height of the bit. It took a bit of time, but it didn’t often slip. And on those rare times where I hadn’t tightened it up enough and it did slip, it was slow enough to avert disaster.

[scamp]

Looked at the Bosch manual and I think the reason for the latch is two fold. One is obvious, to make it easier to remove the router from the base without a tool. As you rightfully point out, given the problems with this mechanism then a simple bolt would be better. The other reason I believe is to make fine adjustment of the depth easier. To make fine depth adjustments you need to open the lever to loosen the base from the router and then turn the fine adjustment screw. One the depth is adjusted you flip the latch back into the locking position. Once again you could do this with a bolt but it would take more time and it might be a bit harder to know how much to loosen the base to make the adjustment. Overall the design could definitely be better. Maybe a locking screw that didn’t loosen over time would be good!

[BEJ]

My 2 cents, have been using Ryobi TR30 and TR45 along with Ridgid 2401. All no longer made but seem to always be some used available in E Bay for a good price.
I have about 7-8 of these guys, nice to have dedicated for specific use. Hate to keep changing bits.