New Helm / Steering Cable

[RWilson2526]

Well got my first tow the other weekend....about 15 miles away from the ramp and coming around the hook and the helm lets go. Had a nice relaxing tow back to the ramp by TowBoat US. (The whole tow experience by the way was effortless so if you have the insurance obviously dont ever hesitate to call them).





Anyway came home and started my research about cable/helm replacement. This was my procedure that I gathered from multiple people on this site. Sorry if I dont credit everyone as I cant remember who did what...but you know who you are.

Went with the Uflex NFB system based soley on multiple recommendations from Spareparts. I also like their claims of a longer lasting design with the 3 gears vs the one large one on the teleflex.



Went with the 17' cable. A 16' cable will definitely work but the extra foot doesnt seem to effect anything.

Get the old cable out any way you want....bolt cutters and a grinder with cut off wheel make short work of it.

I removed the rod box. Fed cable in from the rear. With the rod box out there is no effort at all getting it up to the access hole up by the binnacle. I thought it would be harder but you can actually feed the cable forward with your right arm in the access hole and with your left arm through the hole where the glove box is you can just grab the end of the cable and get it through the hole into the space.

pull some extra cable out through the glove box holeand mount your helm and then slide back in and mount.




The only mistake I made is that the existing helm is 90 degrees but the bezel is angled . The bezel that comes with the kit is also 90 degrees so now my wheel is at a slightly different angle than originally. Still feels very comfortable and I dont even remember a difference.




Finally at least on my 86 the motor does have to be unbolted to get the solid portion of the cable into the tilt tube. Maybe on the early 80's and 70's model with the wider splash well you may not but on the models with splash wells like mine there aint no way around it.






Last thing to do now is figure out how to loosen my pivot point on my motor because its kind of tight which was probably what contributed to my problem in the first place.