Many thanks for the responses - they reassure me that my problem may
not be so big after all. I think I will try to use the excess keyway
initially as it appears as if I might have enough to secure a tiller
arm. I have attached an image of my steering gear prior to its being
removed - as you can see there appears to be about an inch or inch and
a half of excess key (the shaft is 1.75" diameter for scale). Given
that the keyway is only 3 inches long I estimate that the keyway does
not extend the full length of the quadrant coupling either.

Tom - I like the idea of using the teflon impregnated packing gland
flax as a bearing. I'll give it a try. My rudder only has the bottom
shoe as a gudgeon with the bottom tip of the rudder shaft as the
pintle - the only other friction points would be at the shaft log
where it enters the boat and at the bearing at the top of the shaft
(both visible in the picture) - essentially the rudder is supported
vertically only by the bottom shoe - not a real pleasant thought.

Rich - I agree that the ram, pump and rudder feedback sensor are the
key components - I'd sure like to hear what issues you encountered and
how you resolved them. The ram I have has a 12" throw and should
require a 10" tiller arm length for 70 degrees of rudder travel. I
maybe should have gotten a 7" throw as the longer ram is going to be a
bit tougher to accommodate. I'm thinking of mounting the tiller arm
directly on top of the quadrant extending aft with the ram mounted on
the port side. However that looks as if it might cause interference
with the cockpit and bilge through hulls (at least when the ram is
retracted during a turn to port). If I extend the arm forward it
might be much more difficult to fabricate a bracket to mount the ram
on. I assume the ram has to be dead nuts perpendicular to the rudder
shaft and tiller arm or the ram may bind. Do these sound like some of
the issues you dealt with? Anyway - whatever you have learned - and
anybody else - would be extremely useful. Could you respond with the
model numbers of the drive components you are using so I may compare?

Gary - I can't quite visualize your modified tiller arm. Is the
bronze insert a short tube cut in half along its axis and fit to an
over bored tiller arm? If so would having the tiller all bronze
obviate doing the modification? Was it done primarily because your
keyway slot was not long enough?

A final question or two: I keep coming up with 1.75" for the rudder
shaft diameter - does this seem consistent with other boats? I fear
that some metric shaft diameter might be so close as to be nearly
indiscernible - that I'll get a hole bored and find it is too big by
1/100 of a millimeter or some such thing. I've checked it by a
caliper and by measuring the diameter and dividing by pi - keeps
coming up 1.75".

Finally, in the category of the bizarre I have determined - but can't
quite believe - that the rudder shaft does not penetrate the hull on
the fore-aft mid line between the engine mount rails (starboard rail
visible in picture) - in fact it appears to be 8" from the starboard
rail and 10" from the port rail. My engine is a Universal 5444 -
anybody else aware of anything like this? I can't figure out what is
going on visually - All I can think to do is to try and assess the
distance from the prop shaft to the rails in the vicinity of the
forward part of the engine.

Mark Bergin

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