B and G - Autopilot help wanted

[misterhino]

Does anyone know of a B and G or autopilot engineer in the Ardfern / Oban area of west Scotland area
My autopilot, a Hydra 2000 unit has failed with a fault 103, which points to a ram issue.
Any help would be great

 

[sawduster]

I can't help with finding an engineer unfortunately but can maybe help with identifying the problem as I've been though a similar process recently.

We have a H3000 cpu and halcyon 2000 compass which sends data by fastnet to an ACP 1 unit which controls the autopilot. Your autopilot therefore isn't H2000, but is part of a H2000 system, so worth investigating this, it's likely an ACP 1 unit.

The ACP1 the controls a T1 ram for us. It does this through 2 cables, one to the solenoid to control on and off, and one to the motor to control the movement of the ram while on.

I thought that our ram was leaking fluid as it was very weak so I bought one second hand on ebay and installed it. No change. So I took the original home and used a power supply to control it and the solenoid. It worked perfectly when supplied with a decent voltage.

So on investigation it turns out that the power supply to the instruments also fed the autopilot and a lot of connections down the line made the ram get under 12v under load. I reinstalled the original ram with a relay and now it works perfectly.

The rudder sensor could also be problem here as I think that error indicates a mismatch between commanded and measured rudder movement. This could be because the command has no effect, or because it had an effect which it can't measure - you can test with a multimeter and should get more than a 1v difference from the left to middle and mid to right pins when going lock to lock on the rudder.

So to cut a long story short if you can remove the unit then you can test it yourself reasonably easily to narrow down the issue.

 

[Shuggy]

If you're in the Ardfern area then Ardfern Yacht Centre should be able to help.