Sudden sloppy steering on C28, then recovered

[jswhal]

Today my steering became very sloppy, needing lots of turns to keep straight ahead. It felt very loose. The boat would drift left or right and was hard to get it back. On the way home, it suddenly came back to normal, with no drifting and normal feel in the helm. I checked the fluid in both pumps and it was full. Could this be the notorious leaking past the autopilot pump problem? I'm going to close the 3 brass screws and see if that resolves it. Does adding the check valve fix this?

 

[Maggie Anne]

I've noticed that if I'm actively steering with the autopilot on, it does act kind of weird, somewhat like you're describing.

 

[jswhal]

The autopilot was off when this happened.

 

[Martin610]

Might have had air in the lines. One thought is to check level and bleed the system.

 

[Ralf H]

Hi,

Agree with Martin that there might be air in the lines. This would explain why the problem went away, as you turned the air through the help pump and pushed it down the line. It may manifest itself at another helm pump (if you have a cockpit helm), manifest at the steering ram, or work its way back to the main helm. if it does, you can be pretty sure the system is in need of a bleed.

Ralf

 

[jswhal]

Ralf, can you tell me how to bleed it?

 

[CaptT]

Search for check valve on the site. There is a lot of information regarding this matter available.

 

[Ralf H]

Hi,

For doing this, you will need a bleeder like this one: Link Not something most people have laying around. I would recommend searching out a shop local to you who may be able to perform a proper bleed. There may be other bleeders that could do the same and that you could use yourself, but you would have to do your own research, as these are the only ones we use.

Cheers,


Ralf

 

[CaptT]

I've bleed my C28 so many times I felt like a physician in England in the 1400's. Unfortunately it didn't work for my boat. I eventually put Tee fittings on the lines off the manifold, changed the autopilot pump twice and eventually put a check valve in place. It seems the valves in the autopilot pump are not robust enough to do the job. If you screw in the three screws on the autopilot pump manifold, and your steering returns to normal, you can either replace the pump, and have it fail again, put a check valve in, or put in a smart pump, ( a pump with more robust valves, hence a check valve).
Unfortunately this has been a problem discussed here on this site site since 2014. Before you spend time and money on solutions that may or may not work please search "steering issues " on this site,
Hope this helps.
Terry