REPLACING THE EDSON STEERING IDLER PLATE

As I mentioned in the previous post I had a "Yikes" moment while lying on my back and finding an old rusted Edson Idler Plate assembly located below the Edson Pedestal.

Edson's replacement is a much improved more robust cast aluminum assembly much thicker than the thin rusted steel plate. Below is a comparison is the two plates.

Below is a side photo showing the difference in the thickness between the two plates

So it looked like at first it might not be that hard of a job. All I would have to do is disconnect the steering cable, drop the old plate, run the steering cables through the new plate and reconnect the cables.  But of course it was NOT that easy or just a matter of ordering a new idler assembly. 

The above shows the problem that appeared. When the steering system was installed at the Hinterhoeller factory they used Nicopress sleeves on both the eye ends of the steering cable. These fittings would not allow the cables to fit through the feed-through holes of the idler plate. Soooo that means one end of the cable would need to be cut and also require that new steering cables be installed too. Well, I guess after twenty plus years new cables might not be such a bad idea anyway.

Capt Mike's tip: When installing a new steering cable it's a good idea to place a little heat shrink over the cable ends to prevent fraying of the cable. As shown below.

On my Edson Pedestal the cables are required to be crossed inside the pedestal. To accomplish this easily I used two of the fiberglass poles in the wire running kit I carry on board to run the wires through the idler plate easily.

Below is one of the steering cables taped to one of the wire fishpoles

So let this be a reminder to check that steering idler assembly on your boat. If it is an older steel plate one and is starting to rust it might be a good time to think about replacing it. Also check the fittings on the steering cables if they are Nicopress swaged you'll need to replace them too.

DANGEROUS SURPRISES ON BOARD

I think there are three levels of dangerous surprises on a boat. They are YIKES!, UH-OH and WHAT THE (insert your expletive here).  Of the three the "What the..." is the most serious and surprising because it happens without warning. Like when you are sailing along and the mast falls over the side. Second in seriousness is the "Uh-Oh" when you discover something is a miss but, you still might have time to correct things and prevent disaster. This happens quite often when sailing. For example when you notice that the boat is about to jibe but, you still have time to prevent it and possibly avoid ripping the sail.  The last level of danger is the "Yikes" moment. This is when you catch something before it could do serious damage but, you also realize how close you would have been to a "What the..."  situation had you not found it. I had a serious YIKES moment back when I was installing the electric propulsion system on BIANKA several years ago.  I spent a lot of time below the cockpit when pulling the engine out and installing the electric propulsion system. I noticed a few flakes of rust under the engine and thought they came off the engine. Since I was pulling the engine out I was not concerned. After the engine was out and I had installed the electric propulsion system I still noticed that there were still flakes of rust gathering in the area where the engine was.  Then I looked  up and had my YIKES moment:

What you are looking at above is the rusted Edson steering idler plate assembly. It routes the steering cables from the Edson pedestal to the rudder post so you can steer the boat. A pretty important function. As you can see this plate was living on borrowed time. It is often overlooked on board because one has to squeeze down and look up to see it. Usually when one is down below the concentration is on some engine maintenance issue and not looking up overhead.  It looks like over the years water leaked down on to the metal plate and slowly rusted it. Because it was out of sight it was easily over looked.  This definitely need to be replaced ASAP!  Below is a photo of all the rust that fell off of this plate as I removed it.

Definitely not a pretty picture.  Even worse is what the Edson plate looked like after I removed it as shown below:

As you can see this was bound to fail very soon. Which is what made it a YIKES discovery. I still shudder when I think what might have happened had the idler plate come apart when under sail. Happily Edson has come up with a a new and improved design and is not using steel for this part now a days. I'll show you what did to replaced this rusted piece technology in an upcoming post.