Steering Conundrum

Hello,

I'm looking for some advice, please...

I've been refitting/restoring a small motor boat for a fair while now and one of the many jobs still to do is replacing the old steering. As the boat was originally fitted with a stern-drive first used at the Battle of Trafalger, when it failed, I decided to fit an outboard rather than wedge in a new engine and outdrive - the best price I found would have tripled the value of my boat...

Rather than cut the transom to fit the outboard, I went for an outboard bracket, bolted to the transom once I'd filled in the hole for the original sterndrive. I always knew routing the steering was going to be an interesting puzzle, but I just can't think of a tidy way of doing it...

Here's the transom of the boat:




...not a lot of room to play with and already quite a lot of clutter. The helm is on the starboard side:



...so the steering has to come out of the starboard side of the transom:



...but the cable would then have to turn through 90 degrees to get to the outboard, which would get in the way of the boarding ladder and would generally look a bit of a mess. I've got a steering-arm that fits through the outboard bracket and is all rather neat, but it's getting the cable to it that's the puzzle.

Here are some possible solutions I've come up with so far:

1. Swap the ladder and the wing-engine bracket and live with the loop of steering cable - at least it's not in the way of the ladder.

2. Build some sort of bathing-platform across the top of the outboard bracket and route the steering cable under it somehow to hide it - that gets rid of the ladder, but is a big pain in the bum in every other respect.

3. Construct some kind of DIY hydraulic steering arrangement - I've got a couple of old hydraulic rams off an ROV that I could just link together, drive one from the steering cable inside the boat and fix the other one behind the outboard with the tiller arm on it somehow.

4. Ditch the nice new Teleflex steering I've bought and buy a proper hydraulic steering system...to be honest, that's an option I can't justify in terms of cost...

Anyway, before I started attacking things with jigsaws etc, I thought "I can't be the first person ever to hit this problem", so I'd be very interested to hear how anybody else has solved this one...

Thanks

 

You have two options:
Mechanical (cable) steering which will make you have to remove either the starboard ladder or the port bracket.
Hydraulic steering, you can route the hoses from one of the holes, but is more expensive.

 

Hi Gonzo,

yep, that's how I see it.

I'd be interested to see pictures of either solution done before, though - I just can't think of a tidy way of doing it...

Thanks for your thoughts

 

You also need to put a rubber boot on that hole in the transom.

 

There is no tidy way to run the steering cable. If you look at pontoon boat, they have a big loop kind of hanging out there.

 

Place the cable/transom exit farther outboard and inside a "chase", which could be as simple as a 'glass tube. You can step over it on the ladder and it tidy things up neatly, plus makes a much better "lead" to the engine quadrant and controls.

 

Hi Chaps,

thanks for your time and advice on this - a "chase" is certainly an idea worth investigating, thanks. Sealing the holes in the transom is another job on the list of things to be done

Thanks