Well, killing us is being a little dramatic. But burning up 3 autopilot drives and having to hand steer on a VERY long passage felt like being killed!
Found this while crossing the Pacific last year. We had some steering problems but assumed the Raymarine X-5 was the problem. The steering was fine. Felt easy when not loaded. But as soon as we had any weather helm, the steering felt heavy. I thought it was the wheel mounted autopilot that was jamming up. Turned out to be a maintenance issue.
I wanted to post it up here to remind everyone to pull these pins and lube them every year! I honestly didn't know. I thought that the pulleys had ball bearings in them when they are just pins into bushings.
So, once a year.... Lube your chain, lube your pulley pins, or risk a steering failure somewhere where you least expect it.
Click on each pic to enlarge
BTW, Edson told me they have replaced these pins with stainless steel, so we just replaced them with stainless pins found locally. Everything is fine now. Cost me all of a buck. And three autopilot drives before I figured it out!
wow! Great post and maintenance tip-ounce of prevention worth a pound of cure.
Jim
What kind of Auto Pilot is this, the type where the magnet is on the wheel above deck? Or not so much and is below deck? I think we have a Ray Marine ST6001 Auto Pilot (at Helm)??? Not sure even where to look for these items.. So sorry, I am a novice as you can tell.
The pins I am showing are not part of our autopilot. They are the Edson pedestal turning pulleys under the cockpit floor. They guide the cables to the aft quadrant.