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Old 11-09-2013, 12:45 PM
Bushwacker Bushwacker is offline
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Join Date: Feb 2007
Location: N. Palm Beach, Fl.
Posts: 2,456
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The Seastar helm pump comes in 3 different displacements. If you get the smallest one, your steering will probably be much slower than your cable system, like about 5.5 turns lock-to-lock. I got the medium size helm pump, which gives me about 4.5 turns lock-to-lock. The trade off with the bigger pumps is higher effort, which is why I didn't go with the largest one. However the steering effort turned out to be very low, so I wouldn't hesitate to go with the largest pump, which would probably get the ratio down to about 3.5 turns.

My only complaint with the Seastar system is that the stroke of the cylinder (length of the rod and brackets) is about 1.5" too short! It only allows the motor to rotate through about 75% of it's full travel! If I disconnect the hydraulic cylinder from the tiller bar, the tiller attachment hole will move about 3/4" beyond the hydraulic cylinder stop on either side. Don't know if this is unique to the BRP/OMC geometry (like a greater distance from pivot point to tiller bar attachment) or if it's common to all makes, but the point is that it will significantly reduce your low speed maneuverability! I checked out other brands of cylinders but they all had the same stroke.

Before I repowered and added the bracket, I had a Hynautic-based system I built myself, and I designed it with enough travel to put the motor on the stops in both directions. When I started running the boat with the bracket, new motor and steering, I was amazed that I couldn't turn it around in the 80' wide canal across the street from my house by just putting the helm hard over, when that was easy with the old motor hanging on the transom! At first I chalked it up to the "longer boat syndrome" due to the bracket, until I discovered that the new system wasn't turning the motor as far as it used to! Before you jump into it, I'd suggest you compare the amount of travel of the old and new steering systems to avoid a surprising reduction in maneuverability!
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'72 SeaFari/150E-Tec/Hermco Bracket, owned since 1975.
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