Help with Seafari steering cable routing

[SailorChlud]

Good Morning: Have any Seafari owners raised their transom to 25 inch height and used teleflex mechanical steering?

If so, did you route the steering cable under the starboard seat into the splashwell area like you would on a 20 inch height transom?

With the top of the transom at about the level of the top of the seat, If the cable goes under the seat, it will have to make a bend upward of about 4-5 inches to mate with the tilt tube on the motor. I am concerned that would be too much bend in too short a run to give good smooth operation?

Am I just concerned for no reason, or will I need to install hydraulic steering instead? It would help if someone had used mechanical steering and gave me their thoughts? Here are photos of the newly raised transom splashwell area:

[Bushwacker]

John, I agree that the tight radius bend in the cable might be a problem. I can think of a couple of options:

1. When I bought my boat it had the teleflex cable setup, but back then the tilt tube on OMC motors was in the plane of the transom, so you couldn't attach the cable to the tilt tube unless you had a very wide transom cutout, which I didn't have. (The tilt tube on Mercs was forward of transom like on the BRP motor you bought; the little recess behind port seat was made to accommodate the drag link that extends over there in full right rudder position.) On my boat the cable attached to an aluminum tube with a big plastic ball on it on an under-seat bracket that was mounted to the transom, so the tube could move in a big arc as the motor tilted up and down. Of course this required a fairly large hole in the side of the splashwell that was just barely covered by a flexible boot.

2. A more elegant solution would be to set it up like I did when I rigged up the Hynautic system pictured below on mine. (The current SeaStar system was not available in the late 70's when I did this.) Hynautic had a system where the hydraulic cylinder screwed on to the tilt tube on the motor, so I bought that system, but attached it to the aluminum tube from the teleflex system, and then made a bracket from some 1/4" aluminum angle that attached to the stbd upper motor mount bolt and had the tube welded to the bracket. I wasn't comfortable with all the steering loads going thru that bracket, so I sent the cylinder off to Hynautic and had them install the mount on the other end of the cylinder like they used on inboards so I could attach the cylinder to the transom. The hydraulic cylinder was mounted under the stbd seat, and it was easy to seal the aluminum tube where it came thru the side of the splashwell since it didn't move. I then fabricated a short drag link to connect the end of the hydraulic ram to the tiller arm on the motor. If you could find one of those aluminum tubes, which is the same length as the tilt tube on the motor, you could set up a similar system, but just use the cable instead of the hydraulic cylinder. If you weren't comfortable with a single bracket carrying all the load, you could fabricate a second bracket that also tied the aluminum tube to the port side upper mount bolt. Although it was an unbalanced cylinder and harder to turn to port than stbd, the hydraulic cylinder and seals were not exposed to salt like the SeaStar system and it worked perfectly for 28 years until I finally repowered and switched to the SeaStar system. Unlike the new system, which only turns the motor through about 75% of it's available travel, my home-made system used 100% of the available travel, which I suspect the cable systems also do.

3. A third option would be to check with all the outfits that make cable steering systems to see if they already offer similar brackets that mount the cable to the transom instead of to the motor.

[jtharmo]

The previous owner of mine replaced the steering cable shortly before I purchased it. With the raised transom he choose to cut approximately 6-8" in from the splash well from the horizontal surface the starboard seat attaches to. He must have pulled it down with something because he glassed it back in. Below is the best photo I have of the resulting s-bend. Disconnecting the cable, movement at the helm was light and smoothly. My swivel bushings where in rough shape so I can't say if there was an effect with the weight of the motor on the cable. I will say there was no way the cable is coming back out without cutting which was a job that was in front of me.

[SailorChlud]

Bill: thanks for the photo. Is that the boat lost to the fire? I read about that here - my condolences. From your memory - and so I can understand your description, you say the cable went 6-8 inches down towards the bottom of the splashwell?

My boat previously had a hole about 1 inch below the top corner of the triangle shaped side of the splashwell before the transom work. Yours was apparently much lower?

[jtharmo]

Unfortunately yes. Thanks for the thoughts. Looking at the last photo in your OP the area cut was behind the seat hinge starting at the splash well and working back behind the hinge. The cable ran under the seat exiting in the same spot you mention. But it has to make that bend up from there. When I get home I can photoshop something up. I'm not sure this is the best solution just the only one I saw. The only other way I could think to get the cable in the steer tube is to pull the motor. I don't think bend added much to the weight at the helm however.

[SailorChlud]

After due consideration, decided to go with hydraulic steering for the project. Thanks for the input, guys.