Rudder Bearing Fix

[svzafarse]

I am in the Virgins and just replaced a rudder cable and now need to repair/replace the port lower(I believe ) bearing on a Privilege 42 . Any tips/suggestions would be appreciated. I plan to do it invitro at Honeymoon Bch

[Pieter]

Hello,
I am owner of a Fountain Pajot 40ft Cat, and when i have those kind of questions, i get in contact with those fine people of FP, and they have been always very quick and detailed with their answers.
Maybe you could get in contact with the Privelige guys and see what they have to say.

Good luck and best rgds
Pieter Kommerij
SV Onda Boa - Angra dos Reis - Brazil

[Surf City]

Hey Pieter, if you search the multihull page for Privilege cats, the last few pages are just about dropping the rudder and removing the bushing. They show some great photos. I changed mine out on the hard and it was not to bad of a job, just digging a four foot hole was the hard part.

[emcmia]

Privilege and Alliaura have different rudder construction. Mine are about 3" in diameter aluminum stock, milled on the top end for the quadrant and emergency tiller. I recently changed out both uppers and lowers with machined UHMWPE. If you need more info, respond to this site.

[Surf City]

Our rudder stock was 1.5" in stainless steel. Our cat was built in 1993.

[Privilege]

Why do you need to change the bearing?...it it split and become loose or is it just that it has become too stiff to turn. I am assuming that the 42 has the same bearing as the 435.
Removing it and replacing it is a pain-in-the-butt job and can only be done on the hard. I recently took sandpaper to mine and it fixed the problem. I had the boat out of the water and removed the shaft. I created a tool using an 8" piece of scaffolding tube, put a bolt straight through the middle of the tube and secured the bolt in place using nuts and washers, leaving a couple of inches sticking out so that I could attach it to a power drill. I then put 40 grit sticky-backed sandpaper around the tube and sanded the inside of the bearing. It did the trick and my rudder now swings freely. If you need to do the repair in the water and can drop the rudder out into shallow water you might be able to sand the bushing by hand if you can find a long tube or pole of the right diameter. It wont be perfect but it might free the rudder sufficiently until you next need to haul it and do a proper job.