Steering Help. Cable?

[windsurfnut]

2002 SN 196


I replaced the steering cable a few years ago, and this problem followed at some point. There is play in the steering, that shows up as the rudder unloads while turning and transitions to loading the other side. The rudder, rudder arm has no play, no leaks, its solid. As you can see from this video, the play is upstream from the rudder assembly. I am rotating the rudder back and forth by hand in the video to show the play that you can observe at the tube. I have also replaced the helm.
My steering is butter smooth, 2 finger steering. Only this shimmy of the rudder as it rotates through the turn that drives me absolutely crazy.
IMG_1831small.mov

[SilentSeven]

You may need to host your clip on youtube or similar for someone to view. I'm not sure if the board supports direct viewing of video files. I'm unable to open the link above.

[fly135]

I get an error when I click on the link.

[bturner]

I think I may have posted on this before but here it goes again.....

I've done my share of cables over the years and the repair is a crowd pleaser for sure, but no one ever said the boat handled like new afterwards. Everyone was very happy with the solution over what they had but something was missing in getting it right or back to how the boat handled when it was new. Then about 10 years ago, I started replacing the helm when I did the cable. This was a hard sell at first but when you're working for dinner and beer, what I charge for my labor easily allows for the added cost of the helm in the equation.

What I found was much of the slop was coming from the worn out helm pinion and much of that new feeling also came from not having a tilt mechanism that wobbled when you were making hard turns. This was especially true when dealing with slalom boats. By the time most of us get to replacing a worn cable, we've lived with it until the "juice was worth the squeeze" to finally bite the bullet and replace it. All that extra load from the cable is taking a toll on the rack as well as the pinion (that's why that grease on the old rack is black) but when you replace the cable only the rack is getting replaced in the process.

There's not much to these steering systems so if you're still getting slop or flutter in the tiller/rudder and the rudder is tight in the rudder port and the tiller is tight on the rudder, IMO your problem is probably back at the helm. That is barring any hull/running gear damage/defect.

I've done about 4 of these and not one person has had regret over the repair process.