Amadeus is a 30U, 1984 build. I wondering if other N30s have the steering quadrant mounted as low as mine. My quadrant touches the rudder tube brace, and looks as though it is causing wear there. I noticed a post from Breezin that shows at least an inch of clearance there. I attach Breezin’s photo too. I notice that those rudder tube braces are cut a bit differently, which might account for something.
Is your boat out of the water, I assume? It might be interesting to check how much clearance there is between the top of the rudder and the hull. I don’t think it’s supposed to be more than an inch or two. (On at least some of the boats, there’s a vertical bolt protruding down through the hull just before the rudder that’s supposed to catch seaweed and prevent it from jamming in the gap between the rudder and hull. If you have one, that might be a clue – if if the weed catcher’s shorter than the gap, the rudder stock has definitely slipped down too much.)
I’m in Halifax Nova Scotia and Amadeus is definitely on the hard. The rudder itself can’t go much higher, if at all, so I am guessing that the quadrant might be lower than it should be. A rudder picture is below. The issue that prompted me to look into this is my addition of an under deck autopilot. I found that there is almost no room on the rudder stock keyway for both quadrant and pilot tiller. If I have to raise the quadrant even a bit to clear the braces, there won’t be enough key room for the tiller arm.
Of course raising the quadrant might not be possible depending on the height of the steering idler wheels and clearances for the cables; I’ll find that out when the snow has melted a bit.
Rudder picture. There was a a thick washer between hull and rudder. I think that is stock.
Top of the quadrant picture. You can see that the keyway doesn’t extend past the top of the tiller arm. In fact the key ends about 1/8” below the top of the arm. Fortunately the Edson arm is complete overkill for this boat, but I may drop the rudder to have the keyway extended.
I had a RaeMarine below deck Linear drive on my Tartan 40. The drive was rated for 1,000 pounds of force. I believe the Edson tiller arm is adequate but I would hesitate before removing any bit of the bronze. The first storm following professional installation managed to rip the mounting from its secure position. Fortunately we also had a Monitor wind vane and it took us the last 100 miles to Bermuda in winds exceeding 55Kn.
There’s a factory shop drawing on the www.Nonsuch.org website that shows the rudder and keyway dimensions. Click on the MEMBERS tab then, Nonsuch shop drawings. You’ll want to look at the N30 collection, which has all tbe commin features; the N30U set has only drawings for features unique to Ultras.
I feel like I’ve seen shop drawings for the 26’s that include the installed rudder and quadrant, but I didn’t find one for the 30’s.
There’s also a good list of related topics that comes up for this thread. Esp. concerning dropping/reinstalling rudders and quadrants.
I will be doing the below deck installation as soon as other difficulties are taken care of.
I remembered seeing this and finally found it.
This is the same unit I had on my Tartan 40.
Once I had the mounting issue worked out I hardly ever used the windvane.
On the waterway it could hold a course within one degree.
It was very easy to adjust gain to calm it down for offshore work.
I lost a couple of teeth from a plastic gear once in year 3.
It was replaced for $650
I had purchased a replacement and kept the old as a spare and never used it.
The only time it wasn’t up to the job was entering Charleston.
As we entered the buoyed channel
The wind was on the stern at 40+Kn
AND
Following seas 10-15 foot
Other than that it was if the vessel was on rails
rompinronnie
(Ron Schryver "Alpha Waves" 1987 NS30U Georgian Bay Midland ON)
7
Hi Neil, at the top end of the the rudder, behind the cockpit inspection plate, is a large nut holding the rudder in place. There’s normally a plastic washer between the nut and the base. It’s possible that this washer has deteriorated over time and/or the nut has backed off over time. The nut is secured from slipping by 2 offset set screws in the nut itself. A simple fix could be to tighten up the nut to raise the rudder post so that it doesn’t make contact and/or replace the plastic washer.
It looks like the steering quadrant is supporting the rudder, instead of the thrust washer and nut at the top of the rudder shaft. Perhaps the quadrant has to be at that height to line up with the steering components. However I expect the steering quadrant and the rudder tube are not supposed to support the weight of the rudder.
Before you remove the rudder, you could use a feeler gauge to see if there is any clearance between the bottom of the quadrant and the top of the rudder tube. If the quadrant is indeed sitting on the rudder tube, turning the top nut on the rudder shaft only slightly, may raise the rudder just enough to give some clearance.
From the photo, The vertical clearance between the rudder and the bottom of the rudder tube looks to be about a quarter inch. and there seems to be two nylon washers above the rudder. On my 26, I have one washer an eighth of an inch thick . (Is one washer the normal configuration) Removing one of the washers would allow the rudder to be raised slightly, at least to get the quadrant off the rudder tube.
Thank you all for your thoughtful comments. They will be useful when the snow melts a bit and I can get back to the boat. I attach pictures taken last fall of the rest of the rudder stock assembly.
The nut suspending the rudder rests on two washers separating it from a backing plate. The apparent rust in the photo suggests they are steel. I expect that the backing plate is aluminum. The photo from below is not well in focus at top, but it looks like a black bushing lines the hole it penetrates. Hopefully not degraded plastic.
