1977 Hunter 33 Pedestal Backing Plate replacement

[Douglas Ronne]

I recently ran into some trouble at sea when one of the idler pulleys ripped out of the backing plate. Looking up some info seems to indicate that the pedestal is made by Merriman/ Yachting Systems and that they are defunct and you cannot get parts anymore. Further, it looks like the pulleys are pressed or held on one end by some kind of grommet so I don't think I can just manufacture a new plate.

Has anyone dealt with this already? How did you?

 

[dLj]

Sorry, no experience with this pulley specifically, but if you post pictures of the pulley/plate might be able to give you some suggestions just from a general mechanical point of view...

dj

 

[ggrizzard]

Yep. After 36 years the mild steel plate on my 1979 H30C gave up the ghost.
I went to the local machine shop with the old one and they made a new one from stainless.
They cut the holes necessary for the cables/wiring. They drilled through the rivets that held the sheaves onto the old plate, re-mounted them to the new plate with new rivets and now I'm good to go.
I think finding new sheaves would be the hardest part of the process, not making a new plate.
Hope you can get it done.
G.

 

[Douglas Ronne]

I think what I will try is to get a new plate made with the supports for the pulley included - all welded together - with holes in the right place for the wire to stick through. stainless 316 I think - 1/8" for the pulley supports and two thicknesses of 1/8" stainless for the plate since that is what I have available and as far as I can tell it is supposed to be 1/4" thick and I don't want to mess with the height at all.

Here is the plate with the remaining pulley:

and here is the pulley that pulled out:

 

[heritage]

You could try replacing the part with a salvaged Yachting Systems base plate. Monkeyfist: http://boatpartsferret.com/usedsailboatparts-com-monkey-fist-marine-in-green-cove-springs-fl/. usually has some YS pedestals on hand as well as complete Edson pedestals. I opted to convert my YS install to a used Edson unit last year. Actually, because my YS backing plate was in better shape than the Edson one, I adapted it to the upper Edson unit. I did have to drill 2 holes for the mounting bolts as the pattern was slightly different. Here is a pic of the Edson pedestal and the backings plate that I decided not to use.

 

[dLj]

Let see if I understand. You need to replace the plate at the top with that pulley shown in place, and the gaping hole in front of it where the other pulley pulled off. Correct?

How hard is it to feed the wiring ( I think it's wiring) shown by my yellow arrow? Can you easily disconnect it, have a hole in the plate and pull it through it and reconnect? Is so you can just drill a hole for that. Be sure to bevel the edges. If not you may wish to cut a slot (bevel edges on that too).

The pulleys themselves and their brackets look like stainless steel and appear to be in decent shape. If you can't find a replacement part (preferred method), might be easy enough to take out the existing plate, use it as a template to build another plate out of stainless. The pulleys come off the current brackets by removing the cotter pin and take out the pivot pin. Then you could drill two counter sunk holes in the pulley bracket and the pbase plate and attach pulley to new base plate.

You could drill and tap the new stainless plate, put a counter sink on the top side of the plate, then when you put the screws to hold the brackets in, you can peen them over making sure they never come out. You could also rivet the brackets but I'm not sure where you'd get 316 stainless rivets... You can get 304 flush mount rivets from McMaster-Carr:

https://www.mcmaster.com/#rivets/=1967gvl

those could work. Might be cheaper to simply rivet if you have to buy taps....

Just some thoughts...
dj

 

[Turtle777]

The PO of my H33 replaced the pedestal backing plate with a beefed up version of the original. He took the original to a machine shop, explained what he wanted changed, and had a new one made. Not sure what was done to "beef it up", but he is a mechanical engineer so I trust it makes sense. I'll snap a couple photos next time I'm at the boat.

 

[Douglas Ronne]

That is basically what I ended up doing, I made it out of 316 stainless. I'll install it this weekend and try it out! On the left of course is the old one. On the right is the new one with some gussets attached to make it stronger, and I gave myself more room for adjusting back and forth so I could get it lined up right. I also made the through-holes for the cables a bit longer and moved the one for the wires - it interfered with the hull a little, cutting down on the room for electrical.

I did this through www.protocase.com using their design software Protocase Designer which is free (Full Disclosure, I am the lead developer on that software project). They then modified my design a bit after the first prototype in ways Protocase Designer couldn't handle since it wasn't really designed for that.

Here's to hoping it all works! (If it does, anyone should be able to order one anywhere in the world).

 

[Jim Legere]

Nice work. The only drawback I can see is that there is no option to adjust the angles of the pulleys/sheaves...perhaps a non-issue if they were perfectly adjusted on the old plate and you accurately copied the angle. However, I don't think your plate would work on a different model, like my H37 cutter, or even the same model with a different pedestal location...the geometry of the cables and quadrant would be different. I imagine that the open 'rivet' that Edson uses to fix the pulley/sheave carrier is difficult to source...I wonder if a sailmaker could press some sort of cringle in this application?

 

[Douglas Ronne]

yes, I had to measure my geometry very accurately to make this, and the lack of an easy source for those rivets was precisely the reason. I'm also putting some JB Weld around the edges of the cable holes so that if through flexing the cables hit the edges they aren't sharp edges.

 

[readerbill]

I just pulled my pedestal off the boat this weekend to facilitate some repairs. Mine is an edson pedestal but the pulleys look the same. I believe it is starboard. I can't remember how to downsize the size of a photo. So, if a picture would be beneficial let me know and I can send it to you. I attached a pdf with the photo. I see you've made one. Yours looks a bit stronger then the one I removed. Nice work!

 

[Douglas Ronne]

The geometry looks about the same, that's for sure!

Mine fit great except for the thickness - there was so little left of my old one I couldn't measure it accurately so I'm going to get some spacers made too. Can you measure the thickness of yours?

The other issue was in my hurry to get it together and get home for dinner I forgot to cross the cables and so when I pulled off the warf, turning left made it go right and vice versa! Whoops!

Good thing I had done the work on my emergency tiller to make it fit!

 

[readerbill]

I've done the crossed cables before on an old 60s G-3 ski boat. I remember the adrenaline filled seconds before I realized what was wrong. With this boat I must have been lucky when I replaced the cables a couple of years ago to accidentally cross them. The starboard that the pulleys are mounted to is 1/2" thick. Now that I have the pedestal removed from the boat I am considering converting it to a tiller. There is just so much more room in the cockpit. I have to mock one up and see how it would work with sitting and standing while operating it. It would be less "yachty" but it might me more practical in such a narrow space.

 

[Douglas Ronne]

Thank you, 1/2" seems about right - that is what I came to in my guessing. I made some spacing plates and added them in and everything seems to meet up very well!

I was also thinking a tiller might be nice, then there wouldn't be all that dodging around the pedestal in the center issue, and I really like how tillers feel!