Steering on Boat with a Bracket

[Rufneck]

I am restoring a 23' Sceptre. I enclosed the transom and installed a Hermco bracket. I am concerned about the ability to maneuver the boat in tight quarters. I fished on a 20 foot Seacraft CC that had the same modification done and it is difficult.

Is there anything that can be done such as a steering ram that allows the motor to be turned more? Has anybody else noticed a significant difference between a transom mounted motor and one on a bracket at low speeds?

[kmoose]

I had a 24 foot boat with a 36" bracket. The boat steered OK but I cut the transom and re-hung the motor as I didn't like how the boat acted in seas (bow light). I can't stress how much better everything is with the motor as close to the transom as possible. Trim, steering, sea handling..... everything is better other than loosing a knot or two top end due to the motor height.

As far as getting full motor swing, make sure you find the longest ram ends for your steering as the new ones seem to be a little shorter.

[Old'sCool]

Makes for a longer boat so yea a little more room needed but no real problems with mine. I highly recommend Hermcos thru-bracket rigging.

[Bushwacker]

Originally Posted by Rufneck

I am restoring a 23' Sceptre. I enclosed the transom and installed a Hermco bracket. I am concerned about the ability to maneuver the boat in tight quarters. I fished on a 20 foot Seacraft CC that had the same modification done and it is difficult.

Is there anything that can be done such as a steering ram that allows the motor to be turned more? Has anybody else noticed a significant difference between a transom mounted motor and one on a bracket at low speeds?

You are right to be concerned as I had the exact same problem after installing bracket and new Sea Star steering! On my previous motor mounted on transom, I had a custom Hynautic system that I designed which put the motor hard on the stops, just like it did with the previous cable system. Now I can't even do a U-turn in the 80' wide canal across the street from my house, when that was no problem with the old motor! What I discovered was that the stock Sea Star system that is supposed to fit my motor, only turns the motor thru about 60% of the full rotation available! This is with the cylinder mounted on the aft most hole in the tiller bar. If I move the cylinder to one end of it's travel and then disconnect it, the tiller bar will move about another 0.75" before it hits the stops, so it appears that the stroke needs to be about 1.5" longer to put the motor on the stops!

I called Teleflex and raised hell because of the reduced maneuverability, but was told that it has to be that way to meet ABYC standards! The issue evidently is that if they allowed the steering to turn all the way to the stop, they're afraid that some IDIOT might turn the motor all the way to the stops at high speed and flip the boat, etc! I suspect this is a relatively new development and the result of too many lawyers running around loose without enough to do, looking to sue productive companies on the behalf of idiots! My old cable system would do that all by itself due to propellor torque if you had the motor trimmed all the way down . . . all you had to do was let go of the helm! So don't know why this is just now becoming an issue, except that maybe there are now more newbies/idiots getting into boating with more money than brains! (Some stuff I've seen at recent boat shows confirms that trend!)

A neighbor of mine recently repowered his old Boston Whaler with a new 150 E-TEC, but they just transferred the Sea Star hydraulic steering from his old V-6 Yamaha to the new motor. I noticed that the rod and brackets were noticeably longer than mine, so clearly this longer setup will fit my motor. I mentioned this to Teleflex, and they said that my neighbors hydraulic cylinder mounts further out on on the tiller bar, so his motor really doesn't rotate any further than mine. I noticed that Ken also has the longer rod/bracket setup on the No Bones, and his motor clearly rotates a lot more than mine, so I suspect the older setups will give us what we're looking for. I suspect that the solution is to use the longer rod and brackets from an older assembly with my hydraulic cylinder. Don Herman used to rig boats for Pursuit at their factory in Ft. Pierce and knows a lot about steering systems and rigging motors, so I plan to get with him in next couple of months to see what hardware we can cobble up to get more steering travel.