Flybridge Steering

[etott]

I have a question hopefully someone can answer... I have a 1968 Nautaline Houseboat with a chystler 318. I was hoping to add a flybridge with steering wheel and controls. Is there a kit out there for the steering and controls or would I have to buy all new controls or is it not even possible? I am gutting the boat and totally refinishing it.

Thanks in advance!
Eric

[whitepointer23]

hello eric, if you have hydraulic steering its very easy to add another station , just buy another helm pump and plumb it to the existing pipes. you can add extra morse controls, you just need a 2 station adaptor for the engine bay.

[sabahcat]

Originally Posted by whitepointer23

hello eric, if you have hydraulic steering its very easy to add another station , just buy another helm pump and plumb it to the existing pipes. you can add extra morse controls, you just need a 2 station adaptor for the engine bay.

Or perhaps (what I am doing) is have wheel steering and engine controls up top as that will be my primary steering position while manoeuvring, and a remote for the autopilot

When on passage I'll have the autopilot down below with engine controls as well.

Not much steering gets done while on passage

add: May want to check into friction with dual station cable controls (I have Hynautics Hydraulic engine controls)
and also if a lock out is needed

[whitepointer23]

i have dual station, hyd steering and morse controls. works very well. hyd engine controls are good if your budget is large enough. i agree with what you are saying but he is fitting them into a houseboat so he probably won't be doing long passages or using an autopilot.

[keysdisease]

Hello Eric,

Given the year and make vessel you probably have a teleflex type push-pull steering system. Best thing you can do is junk it and buy a dual station hydraulic system. Don't even think about any of the push pull two station systems on the market, the runs are just too long for any of them to work well and with the cost of hydraulic it's well worth the few extra dollars to do this right.

You probably have what is called dual lever controls. that is that there are two levers, one throttle and one gear. These can usually be made to hook up to a second set of controls for dual station, either by hooking them up in series or parrallel. Series means from flybridge to existing control and then back to engine. Parrallel means hooking your flybridge control directly to the engine. In both cases both station levers will move when you push one.

In either case I would recommend the upgrade control cables because of the long runs involved like teleflex Xtreme. I personally prefer parrallel to series for redundancy.

Hydraulic controls are very nice and pricy as mentioned, but the xtreme cables work pretty well on runs of these lengths. My last boat had dual station parrallel with combined approx 45 ft of cable and they worked fine.

Steve

Originally Posted by etott

I have a question hopefully someone can answer... I have a 1968 Nautaline Houseboat with a chystler 318. I was hoping to add a flybridge with steering wheel and controls. Is there a kit out there for the steering and controls or would I have to buy all new controls or is it not even possible? I am gutting the boat and totally refinishing it.

Thanks in advance!
Eric

[Frosty]

Yes it is easy to fit a second steering station with a hydraulic steering pump but dont forget to change the air bleed plug on the lower station for an air tight one. The bleeder type should then be put on top station.

Piggy back type cable adaptors can be made. I could not buy what I wanted so I modified a splitter 4 splitters are required.

Worked great for 7 years but you have to neutralize the station to move to another.