Threaded Mode | Linear Mode

newburyorter

All,

Here is what we think happened. The quadrant (part that the cables connect to) at the top of our rudder shaft worked its way loose and slowly rose up until the alignment pin was exposed.

At the point the quadrant shifted so that the system was out of alingment. The result was that when we tryed to steer to starboard we came up against the bumper.

We were scratching our collective heads trying to figure out what was going on and thought we must have something hanging on the rudder.

The autopilot seemed to work better as we were heading into port.

UNTIL. SNAP!!!!!!!!!!!

No steering.

After limping into port we found that the master link on of the the chain to swaged cable end connections had let go. After looking at things for quite a while we also figured that the quadrant had shifted. AND, one of the two bolts that fixed our autopilot to the shaft has sheared. We found it at the bottom of the aft lazarette. Images of the bolt and the [censored] from were it came are attached. We assume the autopilot must have tried to steer to port and applied enough pressure to sheer the bolt. Since the autopilot appears to work independently of the steering system, why any ideas why that bolt has sheered? Maybe it had happened before this event???

My Questions:
- Assume we should not run on 1 bolt.
- How hard is that to fix? Does that bolt thread into the shaft? Does it go all the way through the shaft? It did not appear to. It appears that a bolt was threaded into the shaft from each side. Is the shaft solid?

Many thanks. Trying to figure out who to approach to best fix. Can you recommend anyone in the Marion, MA area?

Thx!

Brent Byers

***Chuck - Raymarine - Moderator***

Welcome to the Raymarine Forum Brent,

The broken bolt appears to be from the tiller arm to which the autopilot drive unit has been attached. Please note that Raymarine neither manufactures nor sells tiller arms. I suspect that the pictured tiller arm may have been manufactured by Edson Marine and was installed when the autopilot was installed. It is recommended that a Certified Raymarine Installer be contacted to address the reported issue with the tiller arm. Please click here to view Raymarine's Dealer Locator web page from which one may locate Certified Raymarine Installers based on postal code or city, state or country.