Replacing an older westerly steering system.

[steve yates]

My westerly longbow has a very simple steering system, basically rigging cable through conduit, the quadrant end is swaged to a quite thick threaded rod, and attaches to the quadrant with a couple of nuts which can be used to tension the steering.The other end
winds round the drum a turn and a half and is secured by a compressed ferrule captured in a clamp.
The quadrant


The swaged fitting to threaded rod with nuts


Through the sternlocker into the conduit.

The conduit runs though the cockpit lockers

Exiits at bottom of locker

Cable comes up into the pedestal andcrosses over



To wraps round the steering drum


This shows how the cable is secured to the drum,( its a bugger to manipulate the drum out of the pedestal)


and this shows the state of the steering cable back when I bought the boat and had to fix the steering by gwtting the cable wound back round the drum



No one seems to know what type of steering this is or who made it.
There has always been a wee bit of stiffness, especially turning the wheel to stb. ( if I remember right) and I always knew the cable had had quite a few kinks and some broken strands.I assumed this to be the cause of the stiffness,, though it could have been the bearing that locates to the drum needing lubricated? Or the boat losing its skeg, ( another job to be done)

It seemed a good idea though to replace that cable during my current refit. Cliff Morgridge in portsmouth, who deals with old westerly winches and steering doesn’t recognise it, he thought it may be an old edson system.
Diverse yachts systems in southampton, who deal with edson steering, do not recognise it, neither does edson in america,
Diverse can supply me a new cable and chain edson system, using dyneema, for almost £4000, too much to spend on an old boat thats getting so mich else done to it. And it seems like overcomplicating a very simple system.
Cliff can supply new cable and conduit, but can’t do the swaged end fittings. Though he suggested I could send him the whole lot and he could slit the swages and then use jubilee clips on the new cable. That would be about £500, muchmore realistic price wise but he is up to his eyes and can’t give a timescale, and I was hoping to launch in april.

So, anyone recognise this and know the name of the steering system? And any suggestions as to sources of large threaded rod swage ends? Or other clever ways of attaching the cable to the quadrant.

Because replacing the rest of the system seems straighforward, its the ends that attach to the quadrant that are causing issues.
I’m on the east coast.
Or do I just live with it after launch and then find a proper boatyard somewhere and get it sorted next winter.

 

[trevorr]

What size is the wire?
Any rigger will have swage studs that can be roll swaged onto the wire. ie. Swage Stud Closed Body - Sta Lok - Get a Quote Today!

Could you not get the stud ends swaged onto the wire and then feed the wire back through the conduit and use wire clamps on the drum end.
eg Stainless Steel Wire Grip

Cheers

Trev

 

[steve yates]

I think its 4mm but will have to remeasure it to be sure next time I’m down at boat.
That stalok link looks useful, thank you.

 

[Concerto]

Sta Lok was going to be my suggestion instead of a swage. They are slightly larger diameter but you can fit them yourself. They can be undone to shorten the wire if it is too long or it needs replacing again.

 

[PetiteFleur]

I renewed my steering cables on my Moody 33mk2 about 5 yrs ago, very similar system to yours but with a chain around the steering wheel pulley. It was impossible to remove the cable & wire in one piece due to difficulty accessing inside the pedestal. I managed to undo the cable to the chain, cut the other end at the stud and withdrew the cable. I decided the outer cable was ok and replaced the inner cable - with flexible 7x19? stainless cable. The connection for the chain was easy(sorry, can't remember details) cable made overlong. Pushed through the outer tube to the quadrant where I fitted a new stud from Sta-Lok after cutting cable to length. Cable well greased before fitting. I had to re-align one end of the tube as it had a sharp bend where it exited the bracket, where the inner cable had badly frayed.
I had to weld the end before pushing cable through the tube as it kept snagging. Bought the cables from a local rigger. Worked well for me. I also asked Cliff Morgridge but he was expensive and very busy.

 

[BobnLesley]

It reads like our steering cable set-up was similar to PetiteFleur's and I replaced a damaged one similarly:
Having cut off the swaged-terminal and damaged/broken wire at the quadrant end I pulled it through and out with a long mousing line attached. The chain connection at the pedestal end had a weird end fitting which I cut off using a Dremel.
Having drawn the old cable out, I ran the mousing line with bits of diesel-soaked rag tied into it, back and forth through the cable sheath/conduit to clean it out as best I could, then having given that sheath time to dry, I pumped grease into it too before drawing the new (also well greased) cable through using that mousing line.
I couldn't find anything like the original fitting, so at the pedestal end I fitted a Sta-Lok eye fitting (Their ref: STA-033-03) and connected that to the chain using a chain split link, while at the quadrant end I used a Sta-Lok stud (Ref: STA-036-03) with two nyloc nuts screwed onto it. Realising that those terminals were going to be out of sight and mind, after doubly satisfying myself that I'd got the cable length right, I coated the Sta-Lok threads with red Hylomar before locking them tight.
If I did it again, I probably wouldn't pre-grease the cable sheath, the excess took a lot of cleaning-up.
With the OP's pedestal set-up, it would appear any small fitting clamped onto the end cable end would hold it in place behind that tang, or maybe just get the cable end built-up with inox welding? though for less load/more security, how about getting an eye swaged-on that end and thread the new cable around the drum and back through that eye, before feeding it back to the quadrant?
Good luck, I still remember the bumps, scrapes, cuts and aching joints that replacing mine cost me; boat-builders don't seem to bother about sanding off sharp/projecting fibreglass edges in hidden corners like that.

 

[steve yates]

It reads like our steering cable set-up was similar to PetiteFleur's and I replaced a damaged one similarly:
Having cut off the swaged-terminal and damaged/broken wire at the quadrant end I pulled it through and out with a long mousing line attached. The chain connection at the pedestal end had a weird end fitting which I cut off using a Dremel.
Having drawn the old cable out, I ran the mousing line with bits of diesel-soaked rag tied into it, back and forth through the cable sheath/conduit to clean it out as best I could, then having given that sheath time to dry, I pumped grease into it too before drawing the new (also well greased) cable through using that mousing line.
I couldn't find anything like the original fitting, so at the pedestal end I fitted a Sta-Lok eye fitting (Their ref: STA-033-03) and connected that to the chain using a chain split link, while at the quadrant end I used a Sta-Lok stud (Ref: STA-036-03) with two nyloc nuts screwed onto it. Realising that those terminals were going to be out of sight and mind, after doubly satisfying myself that I'd got the cable length right, I coated the Sta-Lok threads with red Hylomar before locking them tight.
If I did it again, I probably wouldn't pre-grease the cable sheath, the excess took a lot of cleaning-up.
With the OP's pedestal set-up, it would appear any small fitting clamped onto the end cable end would hold it in place behind that tang, or maybe just get the cable end built-up with inox welding? though for less load/more security, how about getting an eye swaged-on that end and thread the new cable around the drum and back through that eye, before feeding it back to the quadrant?
Good luck, I still remember the bumps, scrapes, cuts and aching joints that replacing mine cost me; boat-builders don't seem to bother about sanding off sharp/projecting fibreglass edges in hidden corners like that.

I did consider that bob but remembered from previous dissasembly that if some cable tension is not kept on at the quadrant end its a nightmare to wind the cable round the drum, so starting at the drum end and working would, I think, be far more difficult.

 

[Bodach na mara]

Yoi may have completed the job by now but I had a similar problem with my Renown, which is basically the same boat. I had removed the quadrant and dropped the rudder and in a moment of extreme stupidity I turned the wheel. There was an expensive graunching noise and I found that the cables were twisted and kinked. Permanently. The tubes that the cables run in are not conduit by the way but a sort of heavy-duty Bowden sheath. Like you I experienced stiffness in the steering , in fact on the trial sail the previous owner demonstrated that it was stiff enough to leave the helm for long periods. At the time I thought that was a good thing but realised that it meant that the autopilot wouldn't work.

I decided to replace the whole system with one that was less sticky, a hydraulic system. It would be (and was actually) easy to install and not too costly. As this was probably 20 years ago I don't suppose the prices would mean much now even if I could remember them. I got all the stuff via my local chandlery, who ordered them from Vertus. The kit consists of a helm pump, a length of nylon tubing long enough to get from the pedestal to the location of the ram and back, the ram and 2.5 litres of hydraulic fluid.The helm unit has a standard taper so I had to get a machine shop to adapt the wheel hub to a fitting taper as it is a straight bore originally. A keyway also needs cut. Fortunately I found a machine shop which had a sailing owner! The installation of the rest of the stuff was a lot easier than the removal of the old wires and their sheaths.

 

[billyfish]

I replaced mine with hydraulic as well. Never looked back . Works really well with self steering.

 

[Bodach na mara]

In the event mine didn't work well with the autopilot that I was using. A friend, who had been in the army driving lorries, told me about hydraulic drift:- the tendency of the system to alter the dead ahead setting of the wheel when a side load was resisted for a while. He said that on the lorries one had to remember to steer a wiggly path along the road, a story I found hard to swallow. But certainly if I was on a long tack with a bit of weather helm, the position of the wheel to maintain a straight course did drift. Another friend said the drift theory was rubbish and I had either a leak or a crap ram. I never found it a problem but the autopilot did!