Below deck autopilot question

[mmettler]

I have a C34 Mark II purchased new in 2000.  I've had an AH4000 wheel
autopilot the last four years and its worked, but not that well.  It's too
slow and underpowered to really steer the boat properly.  It broke a
couple months ago and rather than trying to get it repaired, I've been
thinking of upgrading to a below deck autopilot, possibly a Raymarine
ST6001/S1G since it would match the instruments already on the boat.

I contacted my original dealer and he was willing to do it, but when his
installer took a close look he felt that he'd have to take out the aft
water tank to have room for an independent tiller arm to attach to the
linear drive unit mounted under the swim step.  They hadn't done a below
decks installation on a C34 before and weren't really sure what other
problems might crop up or what it would cost.

I then talked to a local independant installer.  He thought it would be a
straitforward installation to mount the autopilot linear drive to the side
with a custom bracket and then attach the drive arm to the rudder stop
bolt fitting on the back of the radial drive wheel.  This sounded pretty
slick until I happened to see in the Edson catalog that Edson specifically
warns against attaching autopilots to the radial drive wheel.

Has anybody out there installed a below deck pilot on a C34 Mark II?  How
did you do it?  Did you have to remove the aft water tank to make space
for a tiller arm?  Did you attach to the existing radial drive wheel?  Has
it held up?

Any clues would be appreciated.

[Dale Thompson]

Why a below deck model?  I have a Autohelm (Raymarine) mdl 4000 I installed myself and it works very well.  You just have to run some wires and mount the readout on your helm ... I use a Navpod combining it with my other Seatalk instruments.