How much for a decent wheel autopilot?

[FullCircle]

Fed up with the ST4000 belt drive thing, I am going to fit an autopilot with with hydraulic or linear mechanical drive.

The first quote in reckons a Simrad at £3900 plus £1000 fitting and Raymarine at £3850 plus fitting.

Don't seem right to me?

How much should I be paying?

 

[sailorman]

Fed up with the ST4000 belt drive thing, I am going to fit an autopilot with with hydraulic or linear mechanical drive.

The first quote in reckons a Simrad at £3900 plus £1000 fitting and Raymarine at £3850 plus fitting.

Don't seem right to me?

How much should I be paying?

Jim
i fitted some of mine, Ram, wiring runs, control head ect. Fox`s completed the rest & commissioned to gain the extended warranty

 

[maby]

Linear autopilots are a lot more expensive - both to buy and fit - than wheelpilots.

 

[Tradewinds]

CPT Autopilot - belt drive

Well regarded in the cruising circuit (admittedly US centric)

http://www.cptautopilot.com/

Food for thought if nothing else.

 

[BAtoo]

Had St6000 on last boat - nice bit of kit, fortunately came with boat

 

[maby]

Well regarded in the cruising circuit (admittedly US centric)

http://www.cptautopilot.com/

Food for thought if nothing else.

Looks interesting, but no NMEA interface, so cannot link to your chart plotter.

 

[jwilson]

Fed up with the ST4000 belt drive thing, I am going to fit an autopilot with with hydraulic or linear mechanical drive.

The first quote in reckons a Simrad at £3900 plus £1000 fitting and Raymarine at £3850 plus fitting.

Don't seem right to me?

How much should I be paying?

You have almost the same boat as me: I got quotes on fitting a linear drive - also new control kit - horrible ££££..... I now have two AH4000 wheel drives, swap them each time it plays up. Sometimes a strip down and clean/adjust/light lubricate with MacLube fixes, if it doesn't it goes back to Raymarine. They say you shouldn't use any lubricant, but it does help on the idler wheels.

The ST4000 is powerful enough to turn the wheel, just not nearly quick enough to cope with lumpy stuff. OK in lighter conditions if you can put up with the noise. Linear drives are so much nicer.

 

[Tradewinds]

Looks interesting, but no NMEA interface, so cannot link to your chart plotter.

You're quite right. If you need that function it's not for you (but the lack of NMEA wouldn't bother me one bit ).

 

[Tranona]

Fed up with the ST4000 belt drive thing, I am going to fit an autopilot with with hydraulic or linear mechanical drive.

The first quote in reckons a Simrad at £3900 plus £1000 fitting and Raymarine at £3850 plus fitting.

Don't seem right to me?

How much should I be paying?

That sounds a bit on the high side, but difficult to be precise without knowing the complete spec. There is now an additional choice of Garmin, but think you will find they are all in a similar price range for comparable specs.

Helps understand why the belt drive type are so popular, despite the problems, when they are about one third the price and much easier to fit.

Don't think it will help you, but if you have a Lewmar/Whitlock pedestal you could use the Lewmar drive which works with the Raymarine head and is superior to the wheel drive, but arguably not as good as a linear drive.

 

[pvb]

....Raymarine at £3850 plus fitting.

Don't seem right to me?

How much should I be paying?

What sort of Raymarine kit was included in that price? You can surely get a Type 1 linear drive, computer and control head for a lot less than that.

 

[Twister_Ken]

One other benefit of moving away from the belt drive is - if the wheel is disabled for any reason, maybe a broken cable, it's probably going to be possible to keep going using the autopilot which has a ram directly onto the steering quadrant. So your money is buying you an extra level of security.

SPX10 plus ST70 head, inc gubbins and fitting cost me £3100 before VAT.

 

[GrahamM376]

Fed up with the ST4000 belt drive thing, I am going to fit an autopilot with with hydraulic or linear mechanical drive.

The first quote in reckons a Simrad at £3900 plus £1000 fitting and Raymarine at £3850 plus fitting.QUOTE]

I've fitted a couple of Raymarine linear drive pilots and would say it's well within scope of average DIYer. Advantage of linear drive on quadrant is that you have backup steering if cables fail and no hydraulic seals to fail.

 

[FullCircle]

The ST4000 is powerful enough to turn the wheel, just not nearly quick enough to cope with lumpy stuff. OK in lighter conditions if you can put up with the noise. Linear drives are so much nicer.

The St4000 will not cope with any higher wind strengths where my AWB gets a bit into broaching mode.
It also 'loses' itself and turns without warning.

The clutch slips and its noisy. I hate it.

 

[jwilson]

The St4000 will not cope with any higher wind strengths where my AWB gets a bit into broaching mode.
It also 'loses' itself and turns without warning.

The clutch slips and its noisy. I hate it.

In rough water at close-to-broach conditions when hand steering you have to spin the wheel REALLY hard and fast to keep under control - no autopilot can match this, but the linear drives get a lot closer than the tiny motor whirring round the belt on a 4000 wheelpilot.

I too have had the sudden slam-on-full-lock fault on my 4000 - very rare - almost random, but has happened with 3 different control heads (2 under warranty), two drive units and two rudder sensors. Usually happens when single-handed heading up a narrow channel under power as I put on a fender right forward. Doesn't help that I don't motor much under 6 knots. If I can't sail I just want to get there.

With the lift-keel variant you probably hit broaching mode slightly earlier than a deep-keeler. My son and his ex-49er racing-partner can keep the boat under control downwind in conditions I can't, though I worry for the rudder cables as they do so - it's nearly lock-to-lock in a second sometimes.

And I am not truly rubbish at helming or sail trim myself ......

 

[Robin]

It doesn't matter which pilot you have the one thing none of them can do is anticipate and stop a turn off course before it starts. The advantage of a quadrant fitted linear drive must be that it can put more rudder on faster than can a wheel drive.

We had a Raymarine ST6000 on our last boat that came with it and went with it after we added another 10 years and 18,000 miles, still going strong. Before that it had done the AZAB and out to the eastern Med and back. We also had an AH4000 backup, wired in with a control head in the pedestal array and an inline plug/socket connection to the wheel drive so that the mechanism was kept down below for fitting only if needed (which required removing and replacing the wheel) which it never was.

 

[pyrojames]

I bought a Simrad brain etc, but sourced the rams and pumps seperately. I used twin rams to minimise rudder shaft loads, but wouldn't be necessary for you. Also got full SS rams rather than Simrad/Raymarine ally ones. Happily steered in 7s and a quartering sea. Did all fitting myself.

 

[Koeketiene]

Linear autopilots are a lot more expensive - both to buy and fit - than wheelpilots.

Linear autopilots are also A LOT more reliable.

 

[Koeketiene]

Fed up with the ST4000 belt drive thing, I am going to fit an autopilot with with hydraulic or linear mechanical drive.

The first quote in reckons a Simrad at £3900 plus £1000 fitting and Raymarine at £3850 plus fitting.

Don't seem right to me?

How much should I be paying?

Jim,

Might be worthwhile contacting these people.

When we bought Guapa, the autopilot was on it's last legs.
The Service Centre regularly sell on eBay. Bought a complete Cetrek 730 system (control head, compass, CPU and RFU) off them on eBay for around £600 BNIB. Also bought from them on eBay a new hydraulic linear drive for around £1.1K.
That's a complete, brand-new system - with warranty - for £1.7K. A bargain in anyone's book.

It's been rock solid reliable in any kind of weather - not a single hick-up since fitted.

 

[LadyInBed]

What you need is a Raymarine SPX-10, ST6002 and Type 1 Linear drive which is going to cost you in the order of £2k.
I put an earlier version ST5001+ with the same Type 1 Linear drive on my boat eleven years ago and have never regretted it, it's a wonderful bit of kit.
I fitted it myself and the only surprise I had was the physical size and weight of the Linear drive, and the amount of thrust it produced. I had to beef up the frame I made to hold it!

 

[nimbusgb]

I have a type 1 ram with type 1 Gyro smartpilot and st6002 control head on a 11.5m Benne. It is a capable unit and I've used it in F5 - F6 downwind with a 1-2m quartering swell running and it copes well.

A type 1 linear electric drive is the right size for a 35' boat but if you are expecting it to keep up with stop-to-stop downwind anti broach sailing you may be expecting just a little too much from it! The end to end traversal time is 11 seconds on a type 1 ( same for type 2 and 14 sec for type 2 long travel ) and that's with no load. Under those conditions you are going to have to reduce sail drastically to allow the autopilot to keep up.

Shifting to really oversized hydraulic system will allow you to get 1 or 2 second traversal times but I'd hate to think what kind of loads would be being imposed on the quadrant, rudder post and bulkhead that the ram is attached too. The raymarine linear hydraulic systems are still 10 sec stop to stop.

I see the type 1 ram is now nearly £1100 new the course computer about the same and then there's the control head, compass, rudder reference and all the fittings and cables. To get it to talk to a MFD and still do MARPA you may need a NMEA multiplexer to get fast heading updates so £3500 is sounding reasonable.