Hydraulic Helm Questine (Please Help)

[BRIAN73]

Hello Everyone,


I currently have a 3 line pressurized Hynautic steering system with an external steering ram.

The steering has always been tight since I bought my boat 2 years ago. It's quite a chore to go from lock to lock in reverse.

I decided that I would take the entire system off and see if there were any leaks or kinks.

I removed my hydraulic helm pump first.
Here is a picture (Sorry For The Size)

http://www.donzi.net/photos/Benglert50.jpg


The helm is a Hynautic H25S.
After some research I found out that this helm was usally installed in medium size boats (50ft to 70Ft boat)

Does any body have any info about this unit or knows someone that can tell me if this set up was suppose to be this tight or not.


Thank You for any help


Brian

[MOP]

I have installed and worked on quite a few of these helms, a bit of over kill for your application. But stronger is always better! There is more pressure on the system in reverse when you come off the power and try to steer, but usually not severe except on tiller boats. It is much easier to guide a surface through the water than to fight against, that is the main reason for rudder stops which I have seen ripped lose from letting the rudder hit the stops hard in reverse. What pressure have you been running? On a low single station 5-7 psi is enough, the pressure is only there to make sure the oil reaches what ever height it needs it in no way aides in the steering process, tall fly bridge boats need 20 psi or more, 30 psi is the recommended max. Another thing I have seen is seals swell in the ram from wrong oil but it screws up both direction. My best idea would be to search the Hynautic site and E-Mail the techs they may have an idea. One option is to change the helm for an adjustable one they change the effort by adding or reducing turns of the wheel, Capilano helms which Sea Star uses have this feature. Hope this helps some what.
.

[BRIAN73]

M.O.P

Thank You for you response. I just got off the phone with a tech from Hynautic.

He seems to think that the helm was not timmmed correctly. Apparently there is a flat spot on one side of the plate that has to to be lined up on the left corner????????

He also told me to pressurize the system to 40lb and then bleed.

If my setup is working correctly, I should be able to turn the wheel with two fingers according to him??

What do you think about that?

Brian

[MOP]

If I ran into the same abnormal problem I also would have called the techs, what psi did he recommend for your application for normal operation? We have always kept the pressure on the low side of the scale after setup. He is right it should steer pretty easy.