CTFishTalk.com: Tight Boat Steering Fix - Connecticut Boat Repair, Electronics, and Motor Help ( CT Boat Repair, Electronics, and Motor Help ) - A Community Built for Connecticut Fisherman.

Seahunt_al · Joined: 08 Apr 2012 Posts: 38 Location: Simsbury, CT

I fixed my very tight boat steering for under $25! My steering cable was sticking and binding SO badly the boat was getting unusable. A new cable from Teleflex would have been $300 plus the day it would have taken me to replace it... What I did was this...

Took the steering cable nut off the engine. Took a garden sprayer and filled it with automatic transmission fluid (1 to 2 quarts). I had to put a few different size hoses on the sprayer using odd and end pieces of pipe to adapt them together till I had a hose big enough to go around the cable end and a foot or so of the cable sheathing (mine was 3/4 inner diameter). I clamped any and all connections between the sprayer and the cable, pumped it to max pressure and let it sit for fifteen minutes or so. I started turning the steering wheel back and forth every 1/2 hour or so and let it stew overnight. By the next morning, my frozen cable came back to life. I looked in side the console by the steering wheel and sure enough the fluid had worked its way completely through the cable. I kept working it to get as much crap out of the cable as I could. Disconnected my pump set up hooked her back up to the engine and it worked great. Nice and silky smooth. I can still see a bit of the dirty fluid near the cable end at times so I know a good amount got into the tiny spaces in the teleflex cable and stayed there. I saved $300 bucks and my steering works like new. Funny thing is Teleflex does NOT recommend this proceedure to fix a steering cable. My guess is if this got out, no one would every need to change a steering cable again. This may sound low brow, low rent, classless, redneck, barnyard and cheap and cheesy but it worked fabulous for me.

Here is a photo of the one I copied...Al

PECo · Joined: 06 Oct 2009 Posts: 5203 Location: Avon, CT

Low rent my ass. That's awesome. Very Happy

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hila2006 · Joined: 22 Jul 2011 Posts: 582 Location: Ellington

Dude, that's is awesome. We had the same problem with ours, couldn't figure out how to fix it. Luckily we had a marina across the street from the lake we lived on in Mass, he had all kinds of used steering cable assemblies laying around. We got a used set for $15, but it took us a whole day to install, including removing the old one. But that looks like an easier fix no matter what. I'm printing it out here at work. I'm thinking it may also be a good preventive maintenance thing to do once in a while to keep it lubed up well. Very nice job.