I'm trying to "tighten up" my steering on my 5.5
The noticable points of slop are:

tiller connection to rudder cross bar - Loose and sloppy. I think I can solve this problem by simply tightening the bolt and or adding a nylon washer.

Pin slop in the stanchons (sp?) The pin needs to be bushed. Is there a "kit"? Have some of you made things up to bush the pins (both where they slide through the rudders, and where they slide through the loops that bolt to the boat.

Ideas are greatly appriciated!

try slightly drilling out the gudeons and aluminum rudder heads and installing some of these bronze shouldered babies. Proper alignment could be a bit tricky without a 16" drill bit.

Bushing Page from McMasterCarr

McMastercarr's Front Page

awesome

3/8" diameter bushings on the way to me!

Thanks Jake!

Or you can go to your local Hobie dealer and get the nylon bushings and do the same thing. I have Nacra castings on my Mystere (don't ask) and I've had the same set for two years. No slop. Nice thing about those is you can find them easily.

Mike

I have rudder "slop" as well, the pintle? is a little narrow for the aluminum rudder mount and also the stainless mount attached to the hulls, probaly about 1mm of movement. I'm reluctant to drill the Ali as theres not much room left to drill.

What does this "slop" do?, I mean how does it effect my boats steering?



.

When push comes to shoove as is the case with my very old P16 castings there is an old trick with 1 inch diameter plastic hose.

Cut a few pieces of this hoose about 3 inches long and jam them between the casting and the sterns. The friction between teh alu casting and hose is less than between the gelcoat and hose. Therefor the hose will stay on it place and tighten up de rudderassembly while not really introducing much extra friction in steerage. An added advantage was that the rudders are less like to turn when you lay you tiller bar on the deck. This was helpful when raising and lowering the spi singlehanded or when tightening my downhaul which I can't set from the trapeze.

Wouter

If you have slop in your rudder system you can't maintain a proper toe adjustment. I doesn't take much, a little here and there and it adds up. You might set your toe-in at 3/16s but with all the slop out on the water your rudders might be toeing out. Slow.

A race car achieves top speed in a straight line. The second the steering wheel is turned just a little the car slows. While sailing if your rudders are down there moving all around they're using energy, slowing you down.

A tight system will wear less and will be more enjoyable to use.

Have Fun
Mike

OK, well I've now got a question.

IF anyone has done this, how did they secure the bushings? I didn't press fit them in as the brass would distort and cause premature wearing.

Maybe set screwing them in, so as to facilitate replacement in the future?

(btw, I drilled and removed the housings to drill the top hole, and the stainless rivits I used to put it back together were a BITCH to squeeze!)

Those bushings are designed to be mated with an interference fit on the outside. They will also handle pretty serious motion and should last a LONG time on a rudder pintle. Ideally you should press them in using a mandrel to maintain the proper inside diameter but since a mandrel would be prohibitedly expensive, you can push them in and drill them to the proper inside diameter afterwards. Ideally, a machining 'reamer' should be used to achieve the proper inside diameter after installation but you do loose some of the lubrication qualities when you resurface a bronze bearing (most of these bushings are impregnated with a lubricant and proper surface porisity is important to the life of the bearing). They can be removed by drilling them out or pressing them back out later.

In all reality, this application is such a low load that a very low tech installation would be fine. You might even consider using epoxy to glue them in place if you have a loose fit - but I'm not sure how well it would adhere to the metals. You may want to etch a groove around the outside of the bronze bushing so the epoxy can really lock it in place.

I'll try the epoxy first. I want to be able to service them incase they need replacing. I suppose that the poxy would do an adequate job of holding them in place, and I could always press or punch them out if need be.

I test fit them today, WOW, I bet this is going to make WORLDS difference in the feel at the helm.

In all honesty, I need another set of rudder housings. These were beat pretty bad to the point of haveing a lot of clearance not centered in the origional hole. I got it as close as I could on a press, but next time (If I can find some housings) I'll use a bridgeport, index them to allow a bit more forward rake (which I could take out with the adjustment screw if need be), and do the press-fit and then ream to size.

Few in the local club would understand any of that, and it's nice to know I can find knowledgeable people online here at catsailor!

Thanks again,
Theo