Hello everyone,
I got the boat hauled out a week ago to do some bottom work and a few other projects. One of them is installing a new raymarine ev-200 below deck autopilot, I dropped the rudder today but couldn’t pull it out completely as the boat is just not quite high up enough. Removing the radial drive was a PITA, 3 out of 4 bolts snapped, was enough to release the pressure though and I got it out in one piece. Took it home to take it apart, got lucky and was able to drill out the 3 bolts that snapped. It shows a fair bit of corrosion but won’t know for sure if I’ll re-use it until i soda blast it.
I’m having a fab shop make me a tiller arm for the autopilot, 1” aluminum plate with the same bore hole as the radial drive and a coupe of 3/8in bolts should do the trick. Playing around with the idea of using the tiller arm as “clamp” around the radial drive, not sure I’ll bother with that idea though.
The second part of the equation is going to be glassing a mount to the hull for the linear drive to bolt on to, can’t start on that till the tiller arm is built though. Going to make a jig that will bolt on to the tiller arm at 90° on one end and the other end will have 4 holes on it to show me where on the hull I need to make the mount.