Published by Liam on 17 Nov 2007 at 07:03 pm
Off with the tiller!
After checking my camera to retreive the picture of Stamford (below) I came across some other pictures that I had taken when we changed the rudder bearing on “Unity” a month or so ago. It wasn’t the easiest of jobs but wasn’t that much trouble as we had the right tools. The process is, remote the tiller from the bearing, unbolt the bearing and slide off the stock, pass rope under rudder and lift up, which exposed more of the stock to remove the collar of the old bearing, and then to drop the rudder back down again. To make sure the rudder sat correctly back in the skeg, it meant someone had to get into the water to check. Yours truly pulled the short straw, but with the rudder back in position, the new bearing was placed over the stock, guided into position and fixed. The good was a good ‘un!
kevin on 22 Nov 2007 at 2:52 pm #
You make it sound easy! How did you get the tiller off? I spent half an hour bashing and levering but mine refuses to budge.
Liam on 22 Nov 2007 at 3:04 pm #
it wasn’t easy, I assure you! In fact, it was a complete pain in the arse. The guy who you can see in the picture, is a friend of ours who, thankfully is an engineer and had all of the equipment. I have no idea what the tool was called which he used to remove the tiller but that took most of the time, and that was with smacking the bottom of the tiller, which fits onto the stock with the lump hammer shown in the pic. Eventually that came off and then it was a complete pain trying to get the old bearing off and the new bearing on. I had to end up getting into the canal, as our rudder doesn’t have a hole in the tope so I had to pass a rope underneath it and then once we’d eventually finished that part, I had to get back into the water again, to make sure the stock had fallen back into the cup on the skeg! Not a nice job, at all!