Stiff Steering

[JohnI]

My steering on my 85 Merc 175 is stiff & no amount of lube will cure it. Its either a new set of cables or try & use one of the home made lubers I've seen.

Anyone have any experience with or tried any of these. I esp like the one I found on the allison site, link attached but dont know if it will work on my ride guide cables.
The one I've seen on Screen & Fly is for the rear end of the cables. I would love to be able to do this without pulling the motor. I have the front ov the cable off & have the parts for the Allison luber but I'm not seeing how the lube gets in the cable unless it seeps slowly through the very small clearance between where the cable male end fits through the female end of the cable.

Thanks in advance


http://www.allisonowners.com/helmluber.html (http://www.allisonowners.com/helmluber.html)

[jerry]

make sure its the cables and not the motor freezing up /.

[Dave S]

You can pull the inner cables out of the outer sheath. :D Take 2 vise grips and hold the big end of the cable where the nut holds the cable to the motor and use a small vise grip on the small inner part that is on the other side of the nut. You can unscrew that part that giudes the outer cable and then pull the whole cable out. You can do this with the motor on the boat and cable thru the tilt tube. This is only for round type helms, a rack type don't come apart that way. On motors that are old, the swivel pin gets no grease and binds tight. A big job, ya gotta pull the power head to do it rite. :( Some times the tilt tube gets rusty and needs to be drilled out.