steering chatter Help Mr. BR

[boomerang1]

I have read another post concerning the steering wheel chatter experienced when pulling up skiers and tubes etc. My boomerang is terrible. Not only is it annoying, it is down right embarrasing. Bryan Raymond says in the prior post that this is common with a rack system when the turbulent water passes the rudder. My question is would changing the rack steering system to a rotary system stop this? If so I would gladly spend the couple of hundred $.

[AJones]

What year is your Boomerang? I've got a '96 Boomerang with original rotary steering and so far haven't had any problems with the steering. Could be that the rack is just worn out. My experience with Bass Boats is that the rotary systems are much smoother and have less slop in the steering.

[boomerang1]

It's a '97. I've always owned higher HP outboards with dual rotary myself. Looking at the unit it appears to be a rack system. I'm almost to the point of changing it out just to try something. Anyone know the length of the cable on a "97 rang?

[boomerang1]

I was wrong concerning the steering. It has a rotary system already. Has anyone had a problem with them getting worn and slack causing terrible vibration under a load?

[Catdog1]

Not sure if Boomerang is similar, but I'll post my assessment of Outback of same era.

Lot's of slop, vibration and poor control with 99 Outback set-up.

Cause was found by inspecting each part while manipulating wheel. Ball and socket wear back by rudder, plus loose bolts on same mechanism, caused the issue.

Root cause. Ball is steel, socket is aluminum and no grease fitting for lubrication: Could be considered as non-optimum design issue with teleflex system. Must buy new cable to fix properly. Steel socket would be easy to provide, in my opinion, had teleflex desired. Sounds like planned obsolescence. New cable with new socket is expensive.

In my case, socket was not destroyed to the point of not retaining the ball. So, I cleaned the ball / socket, then deburred the socket best I could and wrapped the ball with a few turns of teflon tape and reassembled.

Will eventually need a new cable, else, a machine shop work-around.

[boomerang1]

Here is an updated as I cured the problem over the weekend. There ended up being 2 things wrong which were easily (and cheaply) fixed.
First: The clamp block ended up not being tight enough. The bolt attaching it to the boat was snug, however, it was bottoming out. A .16 washer took up the slack and pulled everything secure. This movement was causing a shake into the helm.

Second: Where the cable attaches to the tiller arm has a good bit of play up and down. Not to be confused with wear, just nature slack. This was causing a metal to metal knock. A .25 rubber washer hushed it up and still gives plenty of mobility. Maybe this can help someone else.

[Brian Raymond]

Nice job. The rotary components at the helm are pretty robust. If the situation occurs again, use a teflon washer at the rudder. Brian raymond.