Steering and Stern Drive Play

[Chillin The Most]

First off, I am new to this forum, and realatively new to boating. I belong to several other forums for diesels, hunting, and snow removal. I am glad to have found one for boats, as they are a wealth of useful info.

I bought my first boat the middle of last summer. You can see what it is in my sig. I ran it last summer with no problems, and have been doing some small things to it over the winter months. Well tonight I was putting a prop on and noticed some play in the stern drive. If I lift up on it, there is about a 1/2" worth of wiggle room. Is this normal, or is there something worn that I should have looked at?

Also, I noticed this summer that there is some slop in the steering at the steering wheel. If I am standing at the stern of the boat, I can manually push the drive to the port side. However, I can't move it back to the starboard side. Is this normal? To me, it sounds like there is leak in the power steering or something. There are no visible signs of a leak anywhere though. Any help would be greatly appreciated

 

[Bondo]

Re: Steering and Stern Drive Play

Ayuh,... Welcome Aboard to the forums here at iboats.com,.....

As for the Slop you've found,...
The 1st thing to do is See, Exactly where it is....

For the Up / Down,.... Is it the bushings at the ends of the hyd. rams, or somewhere else,..??
For the Left/ Right motion,.. Disconnect the cable from the P/Steering actuator,+ isolate the Slop to either the Cable,.. the Actuator, or the Outdrives swivel points.....

Then you can decide on a plan to Fix it,.......