Replace Upper Seal on A25 Rudder Stock

[dkirsop]

Replacing the seal is a simple and economical maintenance item. The seal is achieved using an O-ring that is situated in a stainless steel holder near the top of the shaft.

To start, expose the tiller arm beneath the centre aft berth cushion.

Tiller Arm.jpg

There is no need to disconnect the steering cable from the arm. Loosen the clamp bolt at the back of the arm and lift the arm up off the tiller stock. If the arm is tight to the stock, back the clamp bolt out further and insert a screw driver blade between the two clamp faces. Lightly tap the screw driver to spread the clamp arms apart and lift. Don't forget to find the woodruff key that will fall out when you lift the tiller arm.

There is a fibre washer that sits on top of the upper bushing. You can remove it now if you wish or wait until you drop the rudder.

Next go outside of the boat and prepare to drop the rudder.

Lower Strut Assembly.jpg

Before removing the lower rudder support I find it helps to place block of wood between the leading lower edge of the rudder and the lower strut assembly. This will support the rudder while you loosen and remove the lower rudder support.

Shoulder Detail.jpg

Undo the socket head bolt and remove it. Then pull back on the pipe support bracket that holds the rudder and lower the rudder assembly. The rudder assembly weighs about 30 pounds.

Clean up the stock, check the rudder for damage and put it aside. Check the fibre bushing in the lower support. Mine was fine so no work required here.

Next use a wooden dowel or suitable drift to drive out the upper support bushing and seal. I used a 1/2 socket extension for this purpose. The seal assembly is shown in the photos below.

Seal and Bushing Components.jpg

The seal assembly consists of a stainless steel ring which holds an O-ring, a fibre bushing and a fibre washer that sits on top of the bushing.

o-ring seal.jpg

The O-ring is metric and measures 3x24x30. I purchased a replacement from Fluidseal. Any supplier of hydraulic sealing components will have them.

Rather than re-use the fibre washer, which was looking beat up, I cut a replacement washer from 3mm sheet teflon.

Teflon Washer.jpg

To reassemble pop out the old O-ring, clean up the stainless steel holder and insert the new. Sparingly lubricate the o-ring with some Vaseline. Slide the assembly over the rudder stock to check for fit and then remove.

The seal assembly is a press fit that rests against a lip in the rudder stock log. To prevent leakage around the lip I cleaned this area and smeared a THIN coating of sealant around the surface near the lip. I then set the seal assembly in place using a socket with a suitable extension as a drift tool. This was followed with insertion of the upper bushing.

The remaining assembly was the reversal of the removal process. When you tighten the socket head bolt holding the lower support bracket in place only tighten until the hole for the locking wire is aligned with the hole drilled through the support pipe.

Safety Wire Holes.jpg

Replace the lock wire and you are good to go.

[DesertAlbin736]

Nice work! How high off the ground does the boat have to be for the rudder to drop clear? Did you have any issues with rust in getting the tiller arm loose?

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[WillieC]

29 inches, thereabouts, measured from the center of end of the boat. Dig a hole or run the trailer up on blocks and dig a shallower hole. Or drive it off a cliff.

Great info, Dave, you read my mind in another post. I did not know there was a washer on the lower end. A very understandable explanation of the process. If one were so inclined, is it possible to pick the old o-ring out of the stainless holder in-situ? Then again, cleaning everything up and re-sealing makes very good sense. I ask the question on behalf of a very lazy acquaintance.

Where did you get the teflon to make the upper washer and could it also be used on the bottom end? (So many questions... hmm, 3mm divided by 25.4 should give me a decimal I can convert to 'Murican...times 16 gives me 1.88976378, now where was I? Oh, almost 2/16ths. One-eighth inch, got it. Someday we should really convert. Sign me up.) This is probably the biggest source of water in my bilge, though not alarmingly so, now that I have decided to plug the abandoned propane locker lower vent/drain hole located about 4 inches, (100mm) above the waterline.

DA, pre-soak the pinch bolt with some good rust-buster and you will have no problem getting the tiller arm off. The bigger problem is the mushroomed shaft end, thank you PO.

"only tighten until the hole for the locking wire is aligned with the hole drilled through the support pipe." Huh? Do you mean stop when hole is vertical? My support pipe has no hole drilled. I just snug it up and wrap the safety wire around the elbow so it can't back out. Ah! I see yours has a small hole drilled horizontally just in front of the joint. Maybe I should go scrape some more. The keel on the WillieC shows evidence of "touching bottom" where the support pipe attaches to the keel. The things you find when you scrape all the paint off. This whole assembly may have been replaced at some point, though there is no evidence of other damage from such a "bottom touching". Whew! Careful when you say that.

[dkirsop]

Yes, I saw your earlier comment and had the photographs from my earlier work so....a posting was born. The teflon washer is positioned at the top between the upper bushing and the tiller arm. It is in fact a bearing as the rudder hangs from the top held in place by the tiller arm. The washer stops the tiller arm from damaging the upper bushing surface. The lower bushings act as steady bearings and do not support the weight of the rudder. I purchased the teflon from Industrial Plastics which has outlets in Victoria and Vancouver.

I think it would be possible to replace the O-ring in-situ. I used a hat pin to remove it and would recommend you bend the tip of one 90 degrees to use as a removal tool. This assumes you are satisfied that the steel ring has been properly sealed in place. Remember the PO? At the time I did not know it was an O-ring seal and so removed it to see what was involved.

The original O-ring was definitely flattened where it contacted the rudder stock. I suspected some weeping was occurring here as there was some dampness in the bilge but not enough to activate the pump. Just enough to remove the labels from my wine bottles!

[WillieC]

Yet another great insight! The rudder HANGS! Of course! Otherwise that puny bottom end would be shot in no time. Mine seems to have a bit of pressure on the lower end and that may be due to missing upper fiber washer or placement of the tiller arm, though I think it is limited. I guess the rudder will be coming off, yet again. I'm getting good at it.

I've got 6 pounds of UHMW (minus the chunk I used on my handy-dandy seat swivel bearing) ready to be sliced into rudder washers. That ought to do the trick, if only my table saw would cut in metric measurements.

Thank you, Dave, you are so helpful! Now if I only knew what a hat pin was and where one might procure such an anachronism.

So what did you do with the wine? Open every one at the same time for a taste test to relabel them?

[DesertAlbin736]

Guess I'd better inspect mine too, since our boats are of the same vintage. All along I was thinking 'let sleeping dogs lie', 'if ain't ain't baroque, don't fix it', etc, but maybe the prudent thing would be to drop the rudder and do what you've done. By the way, what tool(s) did you use to cut a perfect circle washer out of HDPE teflon sheet material? As for gaining clearance to drop the rudder, it so happens as can be seen in the background of the top photo, a 3 foot deep dry desert wash runs behind where I park our boat at this acre "horse property" lot. If I'm careful I can back the trailer close enough to the edge so the stern hangs partly over it enough to gain that 29 inch clearance without having it slide into the ditch. Of course I'd have the trailer hitched to the truck with the truck in park with 4WD engaged & parking brake set.

We have the rare occurrence of a rainy day today & tonight, so will have to let the dirt lot dry out for a few days first.

DSCN3633.JPG

My attention lately has been drawn to devising a mast raising apparatus in order to turn the boat into a motor sailer this summer, as you can see in the top picture all the fittings including the mast step bracket ahead of the windshield are in place. Hopefully when we arrive at Pender Island our boat will look something like this:

182 Motor sail.jpg

Our setup is exactly like the drawing in the owner manual

A25 mast install from manual.jpg

No illusion of course that the boat will perform as a true sailboat without the motor running, but may help dampen the snap roll rate & give a little fuel saving assist when the wind is right, as well as a bit of backup in case of engine failure.

[dkirsop]

I used high tack double sided carpet tape to hold the teflon sheet steady on a scrap board and a hole saw to cut the circles. I have forgotten the order in which I cut the circles but I think it was large first followed by small. A razor edge cleans up the edges nicely. Make sure the hole saw is sharp (i.e. reasonably new) and use light pressure.

[DesertAlbin736]

Great tip, thanks! I do have a set of various size hole saws in my tool kit. It'll be a while before I tackle this project. Besides other PM items on the list we'll be taking the boat out on the lake now and then over the next couple months before the weather starts to turn hot. Have until June 1st to get it all done.

[WillieC]

"We have the rare occurrence of a rainy day today & tonight, so will have to let the dirt lot dry out for a few days first."

I say that every day, then just go crawl around in it.

[DesertAlbin736]

I say that every day, then just go crawl around in it.

Yeah, but is it bare soil that's dusty powder when dry & turns to goo when it's wet? I've seen 4WD vehicles get stuck when the top 2 inches get saturated in heavy rains (which is not that bad today).

Although we get only around 6 inches of rain each year, this is what can happen when we do get a soaking rain. This is from back in the mid 1980s during my days working as a land surveyor for the power company. In this case, this was one of two Blazers our 3 man crew had doing a job out in the desert around this time of year when a heavy rain hit. I was riding in this truck and my crew mate was driving it along a dirt two-track road out in the middle of the desert. Just as I said to him (having seen this movie before), "What ever you do, don't go off the road" we came around a bend and there was this big puddle in the middle of the road. Instead of driving though the puddle he tried to drive around it, and this is what happened. And yes, these were 4 wheel drive vehicles. 4WD actually makes it worse, because you just dig yourself in deeper. We tried everything we could think of to get free, but we were bogged down to the axles, including the 2nd truck getting stuck as bad as the first trying to pull us out with the tow rope we always carried (seen piled next to the right rear wheel in the middle photo). Jacking the truck up and shoving it to the side to get out of the rut didn't work because the ground was so saturated & soft. Had to hike out a couple miles to the nearest phone (in the days before cell phones) to call for a tow to come out the next day. We had mobile radios in the truck, but were out of range to reach anyone. Ah, those were the days.

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[DesertAlbin736]

My apologies that the above reply slid a bit, well admittedly actually way, off topic and got stuck in the mud as it were.

[WillieC]

Just picked up 3X24X30 mm o-ring at McLendon's Hardware in Tacoma.

Ninety-four pennies. And nine more for the gov.

Back to painting.

[dkirsop]

Fluid Seal gave me 4 and said they were too busy to log the sale!

[WillieC]

We need to resurrect the best projects under a hunnert dollars thread! (I have had the same treatment from my local Napa parts store. "Just don't try to return them!", saith the counterman.)

[WillieC]

Now this was one of the easier things I have done on the WillieC, many thanks to Dave K. I was able to make new washers from my 5 pound hunk of UHMW plastic using table saw, drill press, holesaws (even old gnarly ones), and drill press. OK, and a step bit left over from my former life in the trades. 3.5 hours walking out the door and returning for lunch, which includes making the washers. Done. (True confessions, I have had the rudder out three or four times over the last couple years so I was not dealing with frozen bolts and trying to figure out what exactly needed to come apart. Now go back to thinking how amazing I am. )

I highly recommend taking it all apart as Dave suggests if for no other reason than to clean everything up. In my case, the o-ring carrier was spinning in the tube so I had to figure out how I wanted to stop that. Once it was all apart I was able to clear all the gunk out of the o-ring holder so the new ring has a chance to seal. I was able to remove the old ring in place, but doing so raised a loose thread of stainless I didn't want to leave in there. Future owners may thank me. I used a light coating of permatex airplane sealant to hold the o-ring race in place. It just needed a little more interference and the goop should slow down the seawater. The old o-ring was just as one would expect, hard as a rock. Not too much sealife in the tube.

My rudder shaft was rubbing on the lower carrier clear down at the bottom of the shaft and installing new washers fixed that. I am not entirely sure I needed the upper washer since my upper bushing is made out of that composite fiber stuff just like my new cutleass (you decide) bearing. That stuff is tough and provides a substantial surface to bear the weight of the rudder. Mainly the lower washer is what raised the rudder or lowered the skeg. We'll see how well that UHMW holds up. At least metal is no longer rubbing against metal

Thanks, Dave, for your great post!