S37 Rudder Post Bearings

[Nathan Needel]

I have pulled the rudder out of my boat because there were sea creatures living up in the rudder post tunnel. There was also allot of play. I have managed to extract the two rubber/plastic bearings from the bottom but cannot get the ones at the top out. I"m looking for a sutible replacement for these worn our bearings.Does anyone have a suggestion?

 

[Anne-Marie]

I made my own bearings

If you go on the West Systeme web site they wrote an article on redoing your own bearings by pouring a special mixture of epoxy where the bearings were. I did it and it worked great. It is easy to do.It takes longer to remove the old ones...

 

[Paul]

bearings

It is not something I would advise, at least not with the rudder in place. If the rudder post is worn at all, poring epoxy around the worn post will make it nearly impossible to remove the rudder. A friend of mine once bought a used boat where this was done. He never was able to get the rudder out of the boat.