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Minn Kota AT55, out of control steering torque
Thanks in advance for advice, I'm sure this has been asked but I've searched and can't find anything on it in BBC. I have a Minn Kota AT55 foot control TM on my G3 bass boat that's a pain to steer at higher speeds. It's a 5 speed and it's fine up to 3 but even with the tensioner screw as tight as it will go, in speeds 4 or 5 when I want to steer just a little one way or the other I push the pedal just a bit and the motor takes off all the way that direction. There's no slop in the cable and everything works smooth, just not enough tension to control the motor steering torque. I've owned 5 or 6 trolling motors through the years and I know that there's gonna be some torque but never had one this bad. I bought this boat used so I don't know how the AT55 acted new, maybe this is normal. Google searches for a fix turned up a product called Troll Perfect that might be a solution, but is there a fix or an adjustment somewhere that I'm missing?
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Member
sounds like you may have a bent shaft or the motor shaft is trailing like negative caster on a car. Must be vertical or slightly positive, more positive setting and will always want to return to center under load, negative will cause very erratic steering. Negative meaning the motor is mounted behind the top of the shaft
Ideally you would want the shaft perfectly vertical when under load. I prefer mine to be slightly positive for two reason, first it helps keep the transducer pointes slightly to the front, two it does stabilize the steering much better
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Follow up for anybody looking for this problem. It turned out most of my problem was bad cables and a cracked control head. Replaced all of that and it steers like it did new. There still is noticeable torque steer and the the Troll Perfect adapter does help some. I still have to pay attention but it rarely takes over the steering.
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I was going to suggest looking at the head and see if it was broke
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Yep, cracked in three places. And both cables had rubbed through the conduit inside the sleeve. No wonder the steering was mushy. It still is what it is. But it’s all I’ve got!