Wheel pilot fault. When to give up?

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Laundryman

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My st4000 won't hold course. I've replaced the flux gate with new and followed the instructions re calibration. On swinging the compass it falls well within the parameters but won't hold course and the readout doesn't match the main compass, nowhere near. Okay, the system is probably 20 years old so do I give up, buy a new spx or similar, or do I send the 'brain' to Raymarine for repair. Is the st4000 head unit the 'brain' or is there another course computer buried somewhere that I've yet to find? Advice on my next move please. Thanks. Alan
 
AFAIK, all the smaller Autohelm/Raymarine a/p's use the same flux gate. after having about 10 of the damned things over the years and having replaced the odd compass assembly a few times normal failure mode seems to be they either don't respond to direction changes full stop or they become very erratic. The units that display the angle on an LCD will reflect this in the display. I'd also check, assuming the new compass isn't faulty, that it is able to move freely on it's mounts and that it is not near some object that's creating an interfering magnetic field. Of course there is also the possibility that the circuit or connection after the compass is causing issues. I don't think it's unusual for the compass to disagree with the ship' s compass because it depends on the orientation of the a/p and they tend to be used in a "relative" mode anyhow.

A left of field suggestion, and this is a long shot, and my experience was with the older ST3000. I had similar problems with erratic course holding that drove me nuts that turned out to be binding of the drive's gearbox. Stripped it down, cleaned and relubed it and worked like a charm afterwards.
 
After 20 years there's a strong chance of there being something wrong in the belt or gears area. Have you opened it up to see how things look. There seem to be a few pictures on google images, and Raymarine might be able to tell you what it could be.
 
Have you checked the fluxgate wiring at every join for high resistance? One bad joint (actually inside the fluxgate compass in my case, onto the ribbon cable) gave me the same symptoms.
 
Before you bin it, it's worth having a chat with tech dept at Raymarine, I've found them very helpful in the past. At that age they may not have service parts available but may have a compatible later model components if needed.
 
Having replaced the fluxgate with New, I have assumed it works. Clearly the fact that the pilot disagrees with the ships compass by an ever changing amount suggests that the problem lies therein. It could be duff! I appreciate the comments so far. I might now make a call to Raymarine(thank you GrahamM376) to see if they are still Customer focused.
 
Laundryman said:
Having replaced the fluxgate with New, I have assumed it works. Clearly the fact that the pilot disagrees with the ships compass by an ever changing amount suggests that the problem lies therein. It could be duff! I appreciate the comments so far. I might now make a call to Raymarine(thank you GrahamM376) to see if they are still Customer focused.
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I had a similar problem and checked the new fluxgate in Standby mode before I screwed it into the bulkhead by slowly rotating it a couple of turns and watching the readout on the Autohelm. It seemed to be changing correctly then suddenly the display started reversing direction. So then I did the same with the old one with exactly the same result. My conclusion was that if a new fluxgate behaved as badly as the first then the problem lay elsewhere.

Clearly not the mechanical parts at fault because they aren't in use in Standby mode so changed the course computer and all was fine (with old fluxgate, new fluxgate and probably the third fluxgate which came with the new course computer)
 
Okay, the answer regarding Raymarine is yes, they are still Customer focused. Ive just had a very good and frank conversation with their tech support. Their view is that it is a control head problem. Being obsolete they say the they will still look to repair it although the PCB is no longer available. If individual faulty components can be replaced they will, if not they will offer me a discounted replacement. I dont think for one minute that its going to be cheap but their attitude on the Phone was encouraging and refreshing. Sad indictement of our times when you don't expect good service! Thank you Alan
 
Laundryman said:
Okay, the answer regarding Raymarine is yes, they are still Customer focused. Ive just had a very good and frank conversation with their tech support. Their view is that it is a control head problem. Being obsolete they say the they will still look to repair it although the PCB is no longer available. If individual faulty components can be replaced they will, if not they will offer me a discounted replacement. I dont think for one minute that its going to be cheap but their attitude on the Phone was encouraging and refreshing. Sad indictement of our times when you don't expect good service! Thank you Alan
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Did they state the discount? I have several pieces of RM kit that does not work or does not work well.
 
I went through a few of these control heads with various symptoms, damp gets in after a while and they die. You might find a replacement on ebay or you can use the updated P70 with the right connections, it will bridge between st and stng networks and is working fine on my system. I got a second hand one off ebay
 
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