Things I needed to know about Outboards, but didn't know I needed to know!!

 I knew the motor would hang off the transom and that it would need to be connected to controls in the wheel house, as effectively the engine also acted as a rudder. That sort of thing is obvious but where and how to start?

You may recall (see March 2020) that I wasn't sure if the steering cable would be long enough to fit into the engine (see fig 1)

(fig 1)

When I hung the motor from the transom I could see the cable was between 6 and 8 inches too short. No good having recriminations, so I shopped around for a new cable; no luck, all too short or far too long. There was nothing for it other than to buy a total system.

I removed the old helm mechanism and cable with a bit of difficulty, but nothing like the difficulty I encountered when fitting the new one. I'll not bore you with the details as helm installation was covered earlier... this was much the same but with swearing, blood, tears.

The new cable was just right, you can see it emerging in the bottom right hand corner of the picture with a silver nut and long bar leading into the engine

The long silver bar has to pass through a steel tube on the engine. Before we tried that we have to cover the silver bar in a thick coating of a special grease.

The bar was pushed as far as it would go into the engine 'tube', and the large silver nut (bottom left) screwed onto the threaded end of the tube

At the other end of the steering rod, a rubber nut was passed and screwed tight to the end of the engine tube.

 

   

 If I now turned the helm (steering wheel) it caused the rod, at the end of the steering cable, to slide up and down in the steel tube. All that was left to do was connect the engine to the steering rod to the engine itself. For this we needed a connecting rod.

One end of the connecting rod was bolted to the engine steering bracket and the other end bolted to the steering rod via a hole in the rod. All was tightened ready for testing.

I turned the helm from side to side and the engine moved accordingly, hence the engine acted as a rudder.