Rudder Bearings
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Besides Pride Marine, does anyone know of another source for rudder bearings?
Buzz Ballenger sells them and he is in your back yard….
Pride was $50 US delivered for a pair.
Now that I have bought them…anything special to know about changing them?
Geez…I think I paid more than that picked up!
You will need to take a bit off the inside circumference to get it onto your post. Took me about half an hour of careful sanding to get it right. I also had to take a bit off the outside.
Your existing bearing might be tough to get out. You may have to fashion a puller tool to grab the top edge. I used a 10″ carriage bolt, ground down on the head so it would grab the bearing lip.
If you remove the rudder for transport, be sure you take the lower bearing out too…new ones have a tendancy to drop out on the road.
So inside the tube, there must be some kind of stop to hold it? Press in one at the top and in the bottom?
Undo the top clamp, pull the pin and she drops?
For the bottom bearing, there is a surface that the top of the bearing rests against, preventing it from rising upwards. With my bearings, there is about 1/8 inch of bearing protruding below the hull surface because of this surface. It is in a pretty turbulent area, so I am not too worried about that.
Yes…once the pin is pulled it will drop pretty quickly if your bearings are loose… Have a buddy ready.
To get the rudder out, because of the shaft length, I backed the trailer to the edge of a slight drop off. Then let the tongue all the way down….still was very close to not coming out. Have a shovel ready to make a hole in the ground if you need more space.
The rudder came out easily, so it was probably time for the new bearings.
BTW: when I got my CC statement..$66 US delivered from Pride.
Scot…I test fitted the new bearings on the rudder shaft. They are a bit tight, but don’t you want that? Also..did you have any shims at the bottom and top? I had two at each place. Did you put any graphite on them? My rudder shaft had black powder..might be from the bearings, but I’m thinking the previous owner added graphite. Opinions?
I have no shims or graphite…
Bruce, you should fabricate a sanding device to take some of the delrin out of the bushing. They will swell when wet, I used a shaft mounted in a drill with a spiral of sand paper to enlarge ours. You won’t be happy with the feel if you leave them tight.
+1. My new bearings were so tight that it took 2 of us working the rudder back and forth to get the shaft back out. Ended up putting the old lower bearing back in which wasn’t so badly worn. Kept the new one up top to replace the badly worn upper. Even still there was friction from the upper for the next six months which made helming challenging…very hard to feel rudder loading when the shaft was seizing. Finally wore in though and now it’s fine. Best to get it turning free from the git go.
Replaced Fast Company’s bearings a couple years ago and the new ones were tight. Used a 2″ hole saw, put the saw shaft through bearing attached to drill, powered up and drew the saw backward through the bearing. Worked great! Quick, easy and true. no highs or lows from sanding.
One way to get the bearings on: How about a little sandpaper on the rudder shaft! Seems to make sense, especially since I’ve already done it. I sanded by hand the whole shaft to clean it up to smooth. That took off the ‘black’ I talked about. It was bearing dust. I sanded the upper shaft where the bearing goes with 100, then 200, then 600 to get the bearing to a tight fit, but moveable by hand. I did the same at the bottom end…using a small block of wood & mallet to push the bearing down to near bottom first. Then did the sanding routine, moving the bearing down to check the fit. So I hope all bearings are originally tight..as my shaft is now custom to the current new bearings! The 600 should make the bearings last. I still might go up to 1200 to make sure. It did not take much off the shaft…hardly anything and they fit nicely.
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