the dreaded steering cable ! MY FIX !

[jumbo 0]

So my tru trac is very very hard too turn , i removed the rudder and greased it and no diffrence..... unhooked the cable and wow the old grease sure gets hard so i was reading about this soaking it in trans fluid and thought ok i will give it a shot but didn't want too pull cable out so in my craftyness i used my shop vac and reduced the one end and duck taped it too the rudder end , unhooked the steering end and raised it as high as i could , atached a funnel and filled it with trans fluid and with shop vac on worked the cable back and forth till the fuil was gone !!!! and now its one finger turning !!!!! it took filling the funnel 2 times to get it too come out the other end but was way easyer then removing and soaking for 2 weeks

[Nick 0]

Nice! dont you love it when things work out exactly how u planed them too....thats a rarity for me

[WakeDoc 471]

Good Job, saved time and $$$...

[Bigcatpt 408]

Wow, great idea.

 

Let me make sure I understand though.

You had the shop vac attached to the rudder end of the stearing cable so that it would help suck the fluid through the cable or just to not allow it to drip all over once it came through the full length of cable?

 

What did you use to neck down the vac hose and attach to the cable?

 

Did you just pull on the cable by hand to work it back and forth?

 

How long did it take to get the 2 funnels worth of fluid to the other end of the cable?

 

What does this mean? "worked the cable back and forth till the fuil was gone" Must be a typo that I can't figure out....

 

Great idea!

[jumbo 0]

ok i used a rubber hose on the rudder end of the cable and then duck tape to atach the hose tightly to the cable then i removed a cup holder in my dash and unhooked the cable from the steering wheel box and ran it up through the cup holder so it was 3 ft higher than the back.... then found a funnel that fit ovet the cable and used tape to keep it from leaking , then turned shop vac on and poured some hot ATF into the funnel and started working it in and out about 3 too 4 inches intill it got easy'r and easy'r and checked the shop vac for ATF , once i poured and worked it enough too see atf i stoped and was suprised how much water came out of the cable. its all back together and i can now one finger the wheel

[jumbo 0]

oh and i did one funnel then let it sit and shop vac cool , ate lunch cause my old lady made sandwich's then did one more funnel and it was a 1 1/2 hour project with lunch

[duramat 462]

Nice!!

[h20king 794]

new one to me hope it lasts and the cable does not break cables are not made to be serviced I understand wanting to save some cash but having a steering cable break at speed would be bad cables, steering,throttle and shift are designed to only last about 400 hrs then should be replaced.It is my opinion that this is a bad idea remember you are responsible for the people in your boat and the people being towed behind your boat .once again I am for saving some coin but not at the expense of my families safety

Edited June 4, 2010 by h20king

[Bigcatpt 408]

new one to me hope it lasts and the cable does not break cables are not made to be serviced I understand wanting to save some cash but having a steering cable break at speed would be bad cables, steering,throttle and shift are designed to only last about 400 hrs then should be replaced.It is my opinion that this is a bad idea remember you are responsible for the people in your boat and the people being towed behind your boat .once again I am for saving some coin but not at the expense of my families safety

 

 

H20... I have never looked at my steering cable so I don't know what it is made of. I assume it has some sort of a metal cable with a plastic sheath that it slides in??? Have you ever seen a steering cable failure? It seems if it is a metal cable a little oil would not do any damage. It also seems trying to muscle a really stiff cable that needs to be fixed would be much more dangerous and at risk for failure than a freshly lubed cable that only took one finger to operate. So I am just curious what steering/shift/throttle cables are made of????

[h20king 794]

correct there is a cable that runs inside the plastic sheath the cable is fairly thin and under lots of stress from the rudder they are designed to have to be replaced not lubricated I'm fairly sure that the atf will break down the inner plastic liner.We had a steering cable break on our old 89 2001 nautique and let me tell you it was scary boat hooked hard left lucky no one was in tow we tried to manually operate the rudder from the tiller was not happening and had to be towed in.The cables are made of stainless but they are not a solid cable they are wound like wire so they can be bent break a couple strands and it is just a matter of time before the rest breaks probably not so dangerous on the shift and throttle but the steering cable is under much more strain JMTC

[fastjohnny 0]

I was rounding bouy 3 in the course when the steering cable broke in my old boat 15 years ago. Kinda funny seeing a boat do a 90 degree turn in the middle of the course, then cut power.

 

Regarding shift/throttle cable failure, that could be every bit as catastrophic as a steering cable failure IMO, as your throttle is your only means of braking. Even worse on a jet boat, as you have no steering control, unless you have throttle!

[jumbo 0]

thanks for the comments , i do appreciate it