O'Day 222 Tiller
Chuck, the tiller handle that came with my boat was narrow and chintzy looking, so I replaced it with a tiller from a Sanibel 17 which I had. It split on me one day in a race as a friend was steering into shallow water, so I bought an O'Day 25 tiller off of Rudy. In order to make it fit on the rudder head, I had to lower the pintles by dropping them to the next hole and drilling a new hole for each pintle. This gave the tiller enough room to fit into the rudder head and still be high enough to clear the top of the transom. In answer to your question about the bolt; there is only one bolt that holds the tiller to the rudder head. Also, the pendant line that holds the rudder down,comes up through the rudder head inside the bolts and exits between the two last bolts near the tiller, and runs along the underside of the tiller to a self rescue clam cleat mounted on the underside of the tiller. The original rudder pendant lines came with a 3/16 inch piece of Bungey cord about 8 inches long that was attached to this pendant line with little Stainless Steel crimp wires. The end of the Bungey was looped around a bolt near the tiller. What this did was, apply tension to the pendant line when the rudder was in the up position, so that the pendant line wouldn't get caught between the rudder blade, and the Aluminum rudder head. I wanted a beefy tiller so that I could mount the pin for my autopilot, and also another self rescue clam cleat on top of the tiller for a pendant line, to hold my rudder in the up position. I'll check and see if I have some pictures of my rudder and tiller setup and email them to you. In the mean time, continue to ask, ask, ask. Someone out there is always sure to have an answer for you.
