From personal experience I can tell you that at any high speed maybe not even 70 it can be a life saver. My boat, a Cig Bullet handled fine with the stock steering, but last year the big nut that holds the arm like was mentioned above came off. The keeper had loosened up somehow. The boat made a violent left hand turn. Fortunately I had just slowed down from a pretty fast run, so wasn't running very fast, and was able to pull the throttles back and stop without any damage, except for a mess in my shorts. So a few seconds sooner and the turn probably would have thrown me out of the boat. And I was just about to go under a bridge and a few seconds later I might have made a hard left turn into one of the bridge supports. I understand with hydraulic steering that even with a line failure you won't get that kind of torque reaction and are alot safer.

So bottom line is go for it.
John

Go for it, I had cable to the helm with an external ram, and there was a good 2 inches of slop, wish I would of had full hydraulic, but still was better than stock.

Slop was kinda unnerving at 80+ though.

No, it may require a small modification depending on whether you have 1 ram or two, to increase flow.

I lost a PS belt recently and was still able to steer my full hyd dual ram steering with a little extra effort

No, (at least on mine) the power steering pump stays. The whole mechanical actuator gets taken out, actually pretty much everything but the pump. Its all done through hydraulic lines up to the helm, which is all changed also. I know that a few companies make sytems that run off of the mechanical steering, but I would suggest just doing the whole thing, what a difference it makes.

you can omit the p/s pump, and use a capalano helm which skater o/b 's use, but i would opt for the full hydraulic
system

Those take way too many dam turns lock to lock. Ok for docking with twins but I would hate to use one on a single and need to dock it anywhere.

keep this in mind too,if your running a nose cone or any kind of performance lower casing that also puts extra stress on your stock steering.Teague strongly reccomends AGAINSTstock steering and partial hydraulic steering with nose cones,its because the extra length puts stress on the steering system,Smitty