Need advice for replacement or alternative fix for my tiller

J

jaas75

Member
Hi guys the weather conditions this weekend were GREAT!! lots of winds and sunny/warm
Well apparently my old old rudder style decided to give up on me in the middle of the lake, literally a full left or right tiller was just to keep the rudder straight!!!!
Long story short thanks to fellow club members they towed me , first with another sunfish (lots of fun) later with a motor boat
watch the towing!!!:cool:

Ok now the tricky part im not overly concern with with full legality , but i do want to keep some resemblance, basically the 2 metal strips that go from tiller to rudder began to be very soft and maleable (easy to bend) is there any cheap and easy to find alternative to replace them???

i know the correct thing would be to upgrade to new style rudder but honestly for 200dls i prefer to pick up an old hull and fix it

any advice is appreciated
jose
 

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Make new straps out of stainless steel and perhaps thicker metal. This is an old style rudder so I would not be concerned about class legality. On the new style rudders racing sailors are allowed to double up on the tiller straps.
 
jaas75 said:
"...basically the 2 metal strips that go from tiller to rudder began to be very soft and malleable (easy to bend) is there any cheap and easy to find alternative to replace them???
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They're easy to bend because they're made of aluminum. If they're not showing signs of fracture, I'd remove them, and hammer them flat (and use them again). Don't allow any play when bolting them back up.

If they appear weak—or weakening—then bonding a thin plate of stainless steel (or a duplicate "over-plate" of aluminum), would be a relatively inexpensive fix: two plates would be better. Before you drill, use contact cement or other adhesive to bond the plates together.

You can replace them entirely with stainless steel, but for the home-handyman, stainless steel is hard to work with. Find a recycling yard for the stainless steel, as "store-bought" is expensive. :eek: (You'll also want to use a hand-grinder or bench-grinder for much of the work). Drilling stainless steel requires tough and expensive drill bits. (Or lots of inferior bits). :confused:
 
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The old style tiller straps are bronze not aluminum. Probably over time they have weakened. Try looking for stainless steel shroud tangs to use. May have to drill an extra hole for tiller bolt. Something like this (just not this exact one): Ronstan Chainplate 16 Gauge - 8
 
jaas75 said:
Long story short thanks to fellow club members they towed me , first with another sunfish (lots of fun) later with a motor boat
watch the towing!!!:cool:
Click to expand...
I watched the video, and was impressed with the speed of towing with another sailboat—much less another Sunfish! :D As discussed a few days ago, the halyard was eased significantly "for control in high winds".

I see you have a new daggerboard since Lake Arthur's video.

When towing my empty Sunfish by powerboat, I found that a giant water fountain would shoot up through the daggerboard trunk, which could fill the cockpit full. :confused: Keeping a broken (and sawed-off) daggerboard for the purpose of a "dry tow" would be a good idea. :cool:
 
sailcraftri said:
The old style tiller straps are bronze not aluminum. Probably over time they have weakened. Try looking for stainless steel shroud tangs to use. May have to drill an extra hole for tiller bolt. Something like this (just not this exact one): Ronstan Chainplate 16 Gauge - 8
Click to expand...
OK. :oops: Bronze is a "trickier" fix than aluminum. :confused: I'd still remove them, and hammer them back the way they should be. This will "cold-harden" the bronze, possibly making them too brittle to continue: but any "fix" involving heating bronze would be expensive and the outcome could go downhill from there. :( While stainless steel shroud tangs would work, consider "doubling up" on them, as they are intended to work "in shear": again, bond them together, as above.

But what you could do before investing too much is—after they're flattened—to use an over-sized, thick, washer at each of the bolt faces. Advertisers here could provide you with genuine (but used) Sunfish replacement bronze parts.

Then, you can invest too much! :p
 
If you are pulling the rudder that hard over you have too much weather helm. You should move be your gooseneck to 21 inches and make sure the halyard is on the upper boom such that the gooseneck is no more than a foot above the deck at full hoist. And lower would be better.

Off wind pull the board up at least halfway. All that should help.
 
thxs guys for all the advices, beldar i did try to move the gooseneck farther back but still the weather helm was bad. i thought the lower the sail (gooseneck no more than a feet) the more power you got, so in order to sort of depower and easy sailing my sail was fairly up.

light and variable , yeah i fixed an old and busted daggerboard (i even made a post with pictures of the progress), im happy to say it survived the stress test of last saturday:)
 
Put the sail lower and the boat will be more controllable. No wonder you had so much weather helm. Your raising the sail higher put the center of effort of the sail well behind the centerboard. So to try and go straight you had to pull the tiller much farther than you otherwise would have.

In order to depower you should sheet out. But the key is to have the rig set up properly.
 
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