Alan ashore
Member
Alright folks, humour me a moment.
Our Fulmar needs new rudder bearings. Since we bought her a couple of years ago the rudder has been progressively stiffening up. Most likely the present bearings are an unsuitable material. In any case they are doubtless very old. As I'm sure most forumites know, these are plain acetal bearings.
There's no great difficulty in getting new bearings made. She's out of the water for the winter, but unfortunately on concrete. Here's the thought: is there any reason why it would not be feasible to make the lower bearing in two halves, so that it could be fitted without dropping the rudder completely. The rudder could be dropped enough to get the old bearing out and carefully cut it off the shaft.
Yes this is just to try and save some money on cranage. No I don't believe it's feasible to plan on doing the whole thing during an extended hold in the slings on launch day (not least because it is known that Fulmar bearings do not all have the same OD, so we need to measure the old ones).
All views gratefully received
Alan
Our Fulmar needs new rudder bearings. Since we bought her a couple of years ago the rudder has been progressively stiffening up. Most likely the present bearings are an unsuitable material. In any case they are doubtless very old. As I'm sure most forumites know, these are plain acetal bearings.
There's no great difficulty in getting new bearings made. She's out of the water for the winter, but unfortunately on concrete. Here's the thought: is there any reason why it would not be feasible to make the lower bearing in two halves, so that it could be fitted without dropping the rudder completely. The rudder could be dropped enough to get the old bearing out and carefully cut it off the shaft.
Yes this is just to try and save some money on cranage. No I don't believe it's feasible to plan on doing the whole thing during an extended hold in the slings on launch day (not least because it is known that Fulmar bearings do not all have the same OD, so we need to measure the old ones).
All views gratefully received
Alan