Hydraulic Steering “play”. Too much?

[eliteangler]

+1000 On the suggestion to switch over to the Uflex that European Marine sells. SeaStar has some bushings where the ears mount to the ram (one on each side) where a 1/4 " bolt goes through. Watch there as you move the motor back and forth by hand. Those bushing go bad and cause excessive play in the steering. Not sure about now, but it used to be that you would have to send the whole assembly off to someone to be rebuilt because SeaStar does not offer the bushings as parts you can buy.

[Savage]

Isn't this boat a 2018? I doubt that anything is worn out yet. Take the boat to a different dealer and have the rigging inspected and the steering bleed. To me there is air in the system, but it is still going to chine walk on you.

[06 SB]

I did watch the videos. The motor play seems on the bad side of normal but still OK so there might be a little air in there. I have seen worse. The steering wheel is completely normal in my view. I remember the exact same feelings the first time I drove a boat with hydraulic steering on a boat that would chine walk. The newness of both the steering and chine made me think it was the boat. It was me.

[Jtreed99]

^+1. Maybe I’m used to the upgraded mercury cylinder but that looks like a lot of cylinder on ram travel for a properly fully bled system.

[NoZero]

thanks fellas. We’ll have it checked out.

I have 20 or so hours in this boat on pad. - quite a few of those were dedicated solely to just feeeling the beginning of chine walk and learning to anticipate and prevent the fall.

I’ll report back what we find.

[spider1]

After looking at both videos looks like there’s a driver issue.

[EuropeanAM]

Looking at the first video- I personally would like to see less movement in a system that was "just bled".

Also need to check the torque on all related hardware- especially the nuts at each end of the cylinder ram, the nuts at the ends of the through-shaft, and then adjust the thumbwheel to remove all free travel.

You can physically measure the end-play in the tiller plate end bushings: .020" or less gap is acceptable (above .020" needs attention).

[DewRonInc]

It takes a minute to get to where u have no walk. Put her in a slight left turn and learn little by little to make it go straight. You will find that u will be driving by the seat of your pants and u wont be able to make it walk no matter how hard u try.

[OldTimer57]

You are missing a key point. Tapping the trim is the way to get out of trouble. But it is not the way to stop chine walking, ultimately. Here's a methodology:

WOT, then start trimming up a tap at the time. At some point the walking will stop. Tap down to stop, then tap up. But each time you tap up, watch the bow. Notice if it first goes left or right. Tap down, then tap up and just as it starts to move to that side, a slight opposite steering input should delay the onset for one cycle. When it starts, tap down. Then back up and correct again. Once you get that down, restart. Tap up and correct, and then you will probably see it slightly shift to the opposite side. Now you get to double-correct. Stop the first wobble, then stop the second. Once you have that down, go to the third, and then the fourth. And by the time you get there, you are getting pretty close to stopping this stuff. Eventually, no matter how high you trim, even beyond optimum, you can still completely eliminate the walking with the steering wheel. And again, tap down if you start to get into trouble. Better to live and fight another day and all that...

[OldTimer57]

I have an 08 classic with a 2014 pro xs. I am running a fury 3 26p and it runs 75 any day. And jumps right out of the hole. For a classic (I am assuming that is still the old 19'1" classic?) a 25/26 should be perfect. Get the PtP into the 3-ish range (I run mine at 2.75") and you should be good to go. Don't change a thing until you learn to stop the walking...

[NoZero]

Update: The boat went in for 100hr service - lower unit oil, water pump, and they checked and bled the system and checked all of the mounting hardware. It looked like it had the same amount of movement on the trailer as before. BUT

Whatever they did, the boat is radically different - It truly might be that I loaded it different. I ran out of room at 69, but it was EASY to get to that without a hint of walk. It is a drastic difference.


Thank to everyone who gave constructive advice and counsel. <EDIT- See Announcements>

[Savage]

Chinewalk is all about a balanced load.
Seldom the load is so perfectly balanced that chinewalk is eliminated, which is why the driver must do the balancing.
When the load changes, fuel added, livewells filled, passengers add, then DRIVER input will be necessary.