New Steering System Replacement

[Breakin Loose]

Anyone have any idea of how much it would cost (ballpark) to replace/ fix my steering for my Worldcat 266 SC. Currently I have a SeaStar system that is hooked to twin Honda 225's. Over the past 2 years I have had issues with the starboard side piston leaking into wells and also leaking at the helm. I have replaced seals at the helm and consistently bled/ refilled system to maintain integrity. Everything seems to crap out in the fall when usage slacks off. Refilling, bleeding, when its cold sucks beyond belief. I am feed up and what to replace. Any input would so appriacted!

[Trident]

I understand your pain. the stock system sucks and its sea star thats the problem. However you don't have a lot of choices. I will tell you what i did and what has worked for me. I got 2 years out of my original set-up, then air / water in the system and alignment goes out the window. I took the end caps of the cylinders to my hydraulic guy and asked him why did they fail so quickly. He looked at it and said the seals sea star uses he calls dust caps and aren't meant to be used as seal. we talked about putting real seals in and he'd have to machine 4 end caps to fit the new larger seals, not cheap! with weather getting warm i looked at new one b/c any pitting on the ram will quickly destroy a new seal (aka dust cap) and of course i had just a tiny bit of corrosion. in stead of giving sea star more business i bought U-Flex cylinders. They were just a little cheaper and made better in some ways, but by the end of the second season they too were shot.



At the time of the 1 failure i designed a better system but didn't have the time to undertake it. with the failure of the next best cylinders i went ahead with my own system. Its a hybrid of the word cat and glaicer bay systems giving the best of both worlds. I took a heavy duty double ended cylinder meant for steering offroad truck and mounted it under the center walkway then connected the outboards with the right universal joints so each motor can still trim independently. A rubber boot covers the hole where the rod comes out through the glass. Now im replacing a few parts and making small improvements to the system. But in short, having poor quality parts exposed to all the salt and weather is a bad idea. This takes a heavy duty parts and places it in out of the weather and puts a rigid link between the motors so they're never out of alignment.

[Breakin Loose]

Thank you so much for the reply. I would love to see some pics of what your hybrid looks like. I was talking to a great friend of mine who suggested something very similar. He was a swift boat mech in the military and they used tricks like you described to increase overall dependability. Thank you again.