Steering Cable qst

[dkall]

I removed our steering cable and baged it for working in the engine room and on the rudder. Now all is back and ready for the cable to be reinstalled.

The bag tore and the cable is sawdusty, dirty and a little sandy. Not bad.

Qst: How best to clean the cable and prepare it to put it back in service.

Thanks

[Tim]

Compressed air followed by soap and water, maybe?

If that doesn't work, I'd use something like Acetone to clean the cable--just a simple rubdown.

[dkall]

Not sure about the acetone cause don't the cable have a light coating of oil anyway? Shouldn't I keep a light coating on them? They are obvioulsy SS. Maybe I should just clean it all the way up and then put them back in service. The sheves will be best to coat with a waterproof grease anyway so the parts of the cables that run over the sheves will be covered. I just don't remember anywhere any discussion on this.

[Tim]

Once the cables are clean, there's no reason you can't "slush" them (to borrow an antiquated term) with some sort of light waterproof grease or other relatively permanent lubricant/corrosion restrictor. In fact, it's probably a good idea, even though the cables are galvanized or SS (most are galvanized). The grease shouldn't hurt anything since the cables usually are run out of the way of anything else anyway, and therefore the grease will stay where it belongs.