It has been bugging me for a while, When at idle and comming into the docks when I turn my steering wheel the system jitters, Enough to make the windshield shake and it almost feels like I am hitting bottom with a prop. What should I look for?

I have a dual engine power steering pump system with IMCO diverter valve, resivour tank welded caps on pumps, Charlynn helm, Latham rams.

Everything works well at speed, When on trailer they are rock solid no air in the system it seems. . When the steering rams are disconnected the drives flop easily to the left and right - no bind in drives.

Is this just the way they work? My other boat with standard mercrusier bravo setup is smooth as silk
It just has me bafflled, Any ideas?

Check for:

* belt tight
* fluid level in the resorvoir
*pump pressure at idle
*check valve operating OK

Hope this helps,

Steve

Some of the manufacturers have problems with too small a return line causing this problem. You may want to check yours for kinks and maybe think about increasing the size a little.

Are you running external rams? Maybe I'm having a brain fade, but I can't think of what a diverter valve does.

Does it act the same with just one engine running? If it doesn't, it's probably something to do with the diverter valve. Is this "diverter valve" what they call a priority valve (really a combination of valves)? A lot of the dual pump systems don't use priority valves any more. They just put check valves on the outputs from each pump and tee them together to the input of the helm. The check valves are needed to keep oil from back feeding a pump that is shut down. The return line then splits when it comes back from the helm and goes thru both coolers back to both pump/reservoirs. The tops of the pump reservoirs then have to be attached to another common reservoir. This lets one pump shut down and the oil that is returned to the shut down pump/reservoir gets back to the common reservoir.

Falcon

Thanks, I will have to do some more testing, I have not shut one engine off to try it that way. I wil have to check the actual routing and check valves. The resivour is full. I did have a small leak in the trim ram hose (in water) The fluid looks OK I dont think there is water in there. Thanks for the tips.