Is rudder rake worth the trouble of replacing bottom gudgeon?

[glasky]

Noticed recently how elongated the hole in the bottom (plastic) rudder gudgeon is getting.

With a very tight traveller and a metal protected flat carbon tiller the traveller does not saw the tiller in half but the effective rake of the blade moves aft quite a bit as the traveller presses the tiller down.

Is it worth the trouble of of replacing the bottom gudgeon?? - or just shimming the bottom pintle?

Any comments?

GL

 

[49208]

Flip the gudgeons over - It's usually just the top of the hole that gets elongated.

If it's still wobbly/loose, replace them - they are cheap in the scheme of things, but nothing helps more as far as feeling in control in heavy air then having no slop in the steering system (rudder head/tiller and gudgeons/pintals)

 

[pez]

Flip the gudgeons over - It's usually just the top of the hole that gets elongated.

If it's still wobbly/loose, replace them - they are cheap in the scheme of things, but nothing helps more as far as feeling in control in heavy air then having no slop in the steering system (rudder head/tiller and gudgeons/pintals)

I wonder why they stopped making the gudgeons out of steel... Of all the things that likely should be steel, the gudgeons should be (IMHO)...

 

[sorosz]

I wonder why they stopped making the gudgeons out of steel... Of all the things that likely should be steel, the gudgeons should be (IMHO)...

I don't know for sure, but I used to deal with a number of elderly lasers (ie up to 20+ years old, mid-70's to 80's vintage) for a sailing school and in my experience the steel gudgeons would fail while the plastic ones did not. The steel ones would sometimes "tear" (ie stress fracture) at the welds over time. It was a similar type of failure to the oldstyle gooseneck fittings (the ones that were made of two plates riveted together). The steel gudgeons were also way more likely to work the fasteners and oval out the holes making the whole thing loose and sloppy and leaky The only common failure I remember for the plastic ones would be occasionally when the fasteners would rust out (other than operator error when someone would mangle something).

Granted, a sailing school is about the hardest use a laser is likely to get and the old boats were used a LOT, rode hard and put away wet. My uneducated guess is that because the steel gudgeons had no "give" they eventually cracked and failed at the weld or pulled out the fasteners while the plastic was just soft enough to absorb some of the stress without cracking and without noticeably flexing.

-Steve
#179426