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Before I bought my 424, I owned a Catalina 30 Catalina. in their infinite wisdom they put the rudderpost through a fiberglass bushing in the lazaret which wore out quite quickly. Walk around any marina and look at the Catalina 30s on the hard, grab the rudder rock it back and forth and it has a lot of play for and aft which means that the top bushing is worn. their solution was to mix up a batch of west system epoxy with a graphite additive and squirt it around the rudder post and into the fiberglass bushing so it forms a bearing
It’s all listed in quite a bit of detail in the west system handbook on how to do that.
but I was thinking about using the same process along with the epoxy and graphite to form a bearing right in the beam surrounding the rudderpost for permanent fix.
Alan
#140
Unabated -
Alan, a piece of Delrin stock machined to the ID of the opening in the upper support and the OD of the rudder stock would be a simple solution.
Leave a lip so it rests on the beam.
You’d probably want to take the rudder out to do this properly. It’s not a big deal, take the shoe off the skeg (which is probably full of water) and it drops out. Rudder is very heavy.Catalina’s are notorious for loosing the lower bushing as well. There’s a spacer on the stock between the rudder and the hull, it keeps the bushing from falling all the way down when it breaks loose.
Most anything with a spade rudder suffers similar issues. The newer bearings that you see on some of the high end boats work really well and don’t wear out like a solid bushing but they require regular maintenance.
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