Wheel slop

[Divecoz]

I have wheel slop
I feel there is much toooooo much movement in the wheel before the motor /rudders react.
This was a real PITA for my long days of sailing and motoring here in Florida. . I have no doubt, it will be problematic for an auto pilot installation as well.
What have others found. Is it in the steering box itself or just the erector set of pieces used for linkage?
I return soon to Illinois and I have a lot of questions to address and a few solutions to share.
The wife came down for 6 days of my 3 months and suggested we finally bite the bullet for Roller Furler and Auto Pilot it was all just a matter of time $$$$

[tangentair]

Pull off the side cover and look inside, you should be able to tell if the wheel slop is in the wheel assy before the cable begins to move or later. There is some thread that went into the various steering assy and upgrades to improve on this but I can not find it just now. I think it was Frank C that talked about replacing his on an X but it was appropriate to the M as well and there was discussion on how long the cable should really be.
And you better hurry back, we probably only have two snows left to fall and you don't want to miss them do you??? You should post a travel update on getting down to Fla from Chicago and back - where to buy gas (and lottery tickets for those of us retiring soon), etc. in the destinations forum.

[c130king]

Dive,

I also have the '05 and my steering gave up the ghost in May 07. I had some slop and then it eventually locked up. I had big time stripped gears in my steering rack and pinion inside the pedastal and the end of the steering cable froze in place and wouldn't slide in or out.

Steering Broke

But to be honest I think a lot of the slop is linkages in the steering system at the back of the rear berth. But with my new rack & pinion it became much better in the "slop" factor but mostly the improvement was in the smoothness and ease of the steering system.

If you are not having any rack & pinion issues, which you can check easily enough, then I bet your issues are with the steering linkages. But I recommend you grease/lube the steering cable where it hooks up to the steering linkages. Mine was very dry when it locked up.

Good Luck and looking forward to all your "conclusions" and the "wrap up" to your Florida trip.

Cheers,
Jim

[Divecoz]

I will be back soon and on my own computer and better able to address a lot of questions and relate a few solutions I found. I FAILED on one hand, because I never made it South of Sanibel Island but I had a lot of fun and learned a bit more about sailing and the Mac Gregor 26 as well.

[bubba]

Mine felt loose before I put on the adjustable wheel friction brake ($20.00 from BWY ) (my cheep autopilot ) and it seems to have helped the sloppy feeling. When I installed it I checked the rack and pinion and it was OK for now.

[Hardcrab]

In my experience, my wheel/rack assy had the least amount of slop. Actually not bad at all.
The mickey mouse pivot points and joints that simple through bolts produce are the major source of the slop felt, IMHO.
And of course, all of the little slops add up in series to a major slop.

Crawl under and to the back of the aft berth to acess the six bolts under there needing attention.
Snug up all four of the steering pivot bolts first:
Steering cable end to starboard rudder "Pitman" arm.
Both ends of the rudder "Tie Rod".
And lastly, the short push/pull rod on the port rudder arm that exits at the stern.

Then really crank down good on the through bolts that tie the "Pitman" arms to the vertical rudder posts inside at the stern.
Think of getting these joints as tight as you can with the "hope" to distort the pieces towards being a little bit oval instead of round.
(They really don't distort much, but crank these bolts good).
In my boat, these were, by far, the biggest slop culprits.
The arms would actually move quite a bit before "transmitting" that movement to the rudder post because of the loose bolt slop.

Done inside of the boat.

Go outside and tighten the rudder pivot bolts as tight as you can without to much friction for raising and lowering the rudders.
Raising/lowering the rudders should be somewhat hard to do.
I put large, home-made from some thin nylon sheet "washers" to sandwich the rudder in the SS piece to allow for more bolt tension with less friction. Seemed to work great.

I can say that with these things done, the wheel moves less than 3/8" before rudder movement happens.
Not perfect, but much, much better than the 2" of wheel slop I had before.

[Divecoz]

HardCrab I believe I will focus on all those points you mentioned, I cannot imagine that the slop should be as I find it. I never really noticed it before now. It was no doubt there all along , but when your trying to hold a compass heading for 3 hours in choppy water it REALLY drains your mind and your body. I desire to install Auto Pilot this summer , .......after my rough water experience @ Boco Grande Pass but I cannot imagine it working too well with all that .......slop.

[1st Sail]

Has anyone considered using a machine ball joint to replace all the bolted pivot points. All of my press registration systems use the pivot ball joint and exhibit zero play. We hold registration to .01 for the textile presses with no problems. I looked these up in Mc Master Carr under Ball Joints. http://www.mcmaster.com/#ball-joints/=15bxnl I would think they would handle the stress loads safely.

[mikelinmon]

Hi Hardcab,

I will spend some time crawling around inside a couple of Macs tommorow. If you can grt "slop" down to 3/8" so can I. Then there will be a foreman inside the boats next! I'll let you know. We know about ball joints and long term wear/failure/lubrication, but will revisit this also. Remember, stainless steel is needed in a Mac's steering, ever hear about galling ball joints.
Mike Inmon

[Hardcrab]

1stsail,
I saw those types as listed in your link, but they don't lend themselves well to someone with limited tools. I couldn't come up with a way to fit those types to the existing SS factory tubing tie rod with the tools I own.
I dug deeper and found the real deal, just like what is on automobiles, in many different sizes, and made in stainless.

I went to the SS, ball joint, tie rod ends on a 1/2" SS piece of all-thread to replace the factory, poorly drilled (IHMO) 1' tube tie rod.
My goal was to fine tune the rudders to be parallel to each other while adding the benefit of genuine, tie rod end ball joints to eliminate forever at least two areas of steering slop.

My factory bent tie rod tubing bar was measured to be over an inch to long, causing a pretty nasty "toe-out" for the rudders.
I won't say the actual performance gain was huge once the rudders weren't fighting each other, but it's nice to know they are right now.

Real, lubed for life, stainless steel, ball joint tie rod ends were about $9 each, online at Midwestcontrol.com, and the 1/2", fine thread, stainless steel piece of all-thread was about $25 or so. I forget were I found this on line.

The lenght of the tie rod is adjusted with the ends until the rudders are equal, then lock-nutted in place.
It works perfectly, even though it's a strait shot and not bent like the factory piece.
Really pretty easy to do if you have a hack saw, drill, tape measure, and some wrenches.

Oh, and patience helps.