Autohelm ST4000 disengaging itself - follow up

[jwilson]

Some time ago I posted re an Autohelm ST4000 that kept flipping its lever to disengage itself. After speaking to Raymarine (they said send it back to them for repair) and to a local service agent, who suggested I change the drive belt inside the casing myself.

Belt changed now, and the disengaging problem has gone away, so those who posted that they had the same problem might like to try this too. Fairly simple to swap the belt. Of course I now have another problem with it: whilst testing I discovered that intermittently pressing +10 or -10 on the control unit did nothing, and sometimes caused a bigger turn than the 10 degrees.

 

[robbieg]

As regards the intemittent +10 -10 problem mine does not seem to turn the wheel by an appropriate amount (althought the display moves by the correct figure) while testing at the dock but works as it should while at sea. I assume it is something to do with the boat having to be moving before the pilot could work out how far to turn the wheel to comply with the +10-10 instruction. If you have not already done so a sea trial may be helpful to see if you have a problem when on the water.

 

[jwilson]

Oh yes - it's on the water!