Rudder progress

[sailaway78]

Finally making some visible headway. What a project. Who ever designs boats has to be a sadist or worse. The rudder on mine is held up by a bolt/bushing arrangement under the floor. But it is in basically a box, with only an inch of clearance above it, and under a 4" hole. The bolt is over 4". There is absolutely no way to get it in there. I thought about using two short bolts, from inside the tube, which would be possible, but the emergency rudder uses the long bolt, and would not work without it. After a lot of head scratching and thinking, I finally found a solution. I cut a 1" hole in the back of the box, which allowed me to get the bolt half way in, and with a pair of needle nose, the rest of the way. Voiola. As you can see in the pics, I have a little finish sanding and feathering to do, and add a little clearance between the front side of the rudder and the hull. But progress is progress. Hopefully tomorrow I can get that done and start glassing things back together.

 

[CharlieCobra]

Nice work. Whatcha gonna use for core?

 

[BobM]

I still can't believe those cheesy little tubes are the only thing that provide any lateral strength in your rudder. Of course it survived this long with that design and to be honest I think you would have been worse off if your rudder had been more firmly fixed in some fashion. You easily might have lost it entirely.

 

[sailaway78]

Core

Have ordered some 8# urethane foam for the core. Hopefully a couple more days and that puppy willl be done.

 

[rpwillia]

This says it all!

"I finally found a solution. I cut a 1" hole in the back of the box, which allowed me to get the bolt half way in, and with a pair of needle nose, the rest of the way. Voila"

Sound like typical working on a boat fun.

 

[sailaway78]

Sure is

It is typical boat work. Funny how it sometimes takes the mind a while to come up with such a simple solution to an apparently impossible problem.

 

[zeehag]

I still can't believe those cheesy little tubes are the only thing that provide any lateral strength in your rudder. Of course it survived this long with that design and to be honest I think you would have been worse off if your rudder had been more firmly fixed in some fashion. You easily might have lost it entirely.

i was amazed we didnt do more damage than was found-- i was convinced we had disrupted the keel and/or eggshelled her--we didnt--awesome!! this seems to have been a burlier than most spade rudders have the reputation of being...i am impressed by the performance of nice n easy 's boat under the circumstances we sailed her--she did awesome!!!! she got us home!!--she didnt hole--only cracked a little--not enough to even notice much more water incoming--just slightly increased and she kept her rudder pieces until we got home --impressive----

 

[Billbeard]

Are rudders always hollow core? I Just dropped the rudder on my lancer25 in preparation to put the boat on the hard figuring there would be less chance of damaging it and I thought by the weight it was solid. And now I’m wondering if I have saturated core material of some kind that I'llI need to deal with. Should I take a core sample?

 

[Snotter]

Wouldn't you want to shoot for zero bouyancy to minamize rubbing, friction, and abrasion? You may want to add some lead to the rudder. Is the original rudder ballasted?

 

[Benny]

Yes, them boat designers are sick, they make a Japanese automobile engine comparment designer pale by comparison.

 

[Ross]

Every complex assembly I have ever seen has accessability issues. The old joke was that if you wanted to remove the radiator on a cadillac you first had to remove the fenders for acces to the bolts on the radiator but to remove all of the fender bolts you had to remove the radiator.

 

[kendall]

Yeah, always fun! Have to break then rebuild the boat to repair something all the time.

A lot of the newer cars, you have to remove the intake to change park plugs. A friend has a pontiac, in order to check transmission fluid the easiest way is to cut a hole in the floorboard. Some dodges, you have to jack up the car, pull the tire and remove the fender liner to change the battery. My girlfriends old car, to change the distributor cap, you had to remove a section of the frame.

All in all, I think I'd rather work on boats because the routine stuff is easy to do, it's only the major repairs that are a pain, I hate car designers!

Ken.

 

[Ross]

I had a Studebaker and used to change the sparkplugs with an open end wrench.

 

[BobM]

Let's not get started on cars!

I had a Studebaker and used to change the sparkplugs with an open end wrench.

I have a nice Jag XJS you can come play with!

 

[sailaway78]

Fond memories

I have very fond memories of an older Ford pickup I used to own. It had a 300CI, inline 6 banger, with points and a carb. You could actually raise the hood, get in and crawl around the engine compartment. Nothing was hidden or hard to get to. Sometimes I'm pretty sure that progress is not good.