Hi there, I’ve been disassembling my rudder as part of a total refit. I decided I want to rebuild the rudder with a straight stainless steel stock and replace the fittings with something better as my gudgeon and shoe were wormed out with extra holes someone drilled. Thinking about a robust shoe that can actually be through bolted through the keel athwartships from plate to plate. Still working on a plan that’s strong and simple.
So at the moment what’s left of the original rudder is a length of stock stuck in the old stuffing box tube trimmed to an inch proud on either side. It will barely turn with a pipe wrench. We’ve gotten it to work it’s way up with some hard hammer strikes from below but I’m concerned about the collateral damage. I can tell now the threaded tube has become delaminated and can rotate by hand a few degrees.
My plan is to keep driving the stock up with a hammer. I’m wondering about glassing a tube over the old stuffing tube and running that up to the cockpit. Do I need some kind of bearing in there? Trying to get a sense of what that whole assembly looks like if that’s a good approach.
Any thoughts are appreciated
Ryan
A30 Rudder stock stuck bad
- atomvoyager
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Re: A30 Rudder stock stuck bad
Not sure but maybe the shaft is seized onto a bushing of dissimilar metal such as aluminum that has swelled from corrosion. The new shaft should have a non-corrosive bushing of maybe delrin or bronze with some clearance and maybe packing material for reducing water coming up at speed. You could wrap the old damaged tube in lots of fiberglass and that should restore any lost strength. Here's a photo of a Triton rudder replaced by a previous owner before I got to work on it. All the protruding bolts and nuts are not ideal and I covered them in epoxy putty - not ideal but it's strong.
- atomvoyager
- Moderator | Revitalizer of Classics
- Posts: 421
- Joined: Thu Jul 12, 2018 7:48 am
- Boat Name: Atom
- Boat Type: Pearson Triton
- Contact:
Re: A30 Rudder stock stuck bad
In the photo above you can see the shoe is stainless plates with a thick-walled pipe welded onto them for the shaft to fit into. Drilling and taping stainless is tough but maybe a local machine shop could countersink the bolt head and tap the other side.
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- Bottom Sanding Grunt
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Re: A30 Rudder stock stuck bad
Thank you! That rudder is an excellent reference.