Not being able to find a ready made steering arm on the open market that l am happy with,l intend to make my own steering arm out of ali and maybe put a brass bush in if required.
Has anybody out there made their own ? if so did you just use the ali arm on its own or did you put a bush in the arm.
Woody

You can't get this unit in the UK?
http://www.shopatron.com/product/produc ... B155/101.0

...94

This discussion was 6 years ago, but the Dubro 155 nylon steering arm is still the same part it was then.

I know Rick West now recommends that people make their own heavy duty steering arm for heavy weather from available servo arm and collar, but I wonder if anyone has had any problems with the Dubro 155 especially if they hooked up to the second hole rather than using the third or fourth hole.

I miss that black hard plastic steering arm we used to be able to buy. Nice strong piece.

Thank you,

Scott

I really have to give Robert Dudinsky credit for making a "bullet-proof" tiller arm.
After having MANY failures on my boats he offered his "milled" tiller arm that will outlast most of the pieces on my boat.
look at it on the suppliers page,"RMD"


R.C.Greer

Bob D. Makes jewelry. Best you can find.

I would rather wonder why I won than to know exaclty why I lost.

Steering arm using a Dubro nylon 155. I still have not learned my lesson. I know this is not the strongest steering arm to put on the rudder, but it has been reliable for me all these years.

One big problem is that the 155 has a 1/8th inch diameter hole in the brass collar and that collar cannot be drilled out to 3/16 while it is in place on the arm. Not possible for me to do it anyway. I want to write down how I did it today for my future reference. I was going to say that it might help other builders but probably not.

The problem is that if I try to drill the brass collar in place on the arm, the collar is only exposed on one side of the arm. So one side of the vice grips is against nylon. So I end up destroying the arm nylon due to the drill digging in, the collar spinning and the allen head screw ripping the nylon.

At that point it is time to throw away that ripped useless arm and try the next one. I buy these things by the gross.

I cannot remember how I managed to drill one of these out before, but looking at the flat spot on one of my spare collars it probably involved a vice.

Today I removed the allen head screw and pushed/worked the collar out of the arm using a rat tail file and vise grips. Push on one side of the arm and then the other and eventually the collar pops out of the arm. See image.

I reinstalled the allen head screw until the end showed itself inside the collar and then backed it off a little, so I could enlarge the hole with a 3/16 drill. It still was not easy. I found I had to grab the screw head with the vise grips and lay the collar on a flat board with pressure, and then I could drill it out without the collar getting away from me.

Pop the collar back into the arm – being careful to line it up – concentric holes - and then we are on our way. Just got to remember to put the clevis in the second hole out from the center.

Every ten minute job takes 2 hours.

I will add one small item that I figured out yesterday while doing my favorite thing in life - sitting in my recliner watching someone use a milling machine on TV. The problem was that my rudder tube is cut at a slight angle. How to make it be perfectly flat at each end. It hit me. Chuck the tube in the drill press and lower it down onto a file sitting on the table.

Scott