Desperately seeking advise on how to bleed hydraulic steering
 

ok I have cracked all 4 lines on the cylinders with the wheel being cranked from one side to the next as each line is cracked all along a guy adding more fluid.....I have a steady stream of fluid from each fitting but nothing happens.:mad:

I can physically pull the drives to the port side and then crank the wheel clear to the starboard and pull the wheel hard and the drives will instantly shoot to the starboard side, but then nothing else PERIOD!! I have tried every possible routing option for the hoses, and I am confident that I have the right combination...but I jsut cant get rid of the air, I have tried with engine off and pulling the drives back and forth physically with the engine off and lines cracked (you can hear all kinds of air bubbling inside the system while doing this)......HOW THE FU*K DO I GET IT OUT??:mad: :mad:

Re: Desperately seeking advise on how to bleed hydraulic steering
 

Re: Desperately seeking advise on how to bleed hydraulic steering
 

What kind of system is it? I have so infomation on Imco. If you want I could scan it and send it e-mail.

Re: Desperately seeking advise on how to bleed hydraulic steering
 

Are the lines in that picture ran like that temporarily till you get this fixed?

Marine machine told me to ....
open the fitting furthest from the transom first.
turn wheel 3/4 way to right.
close fitting after no bubbles.
open fitting closest to transom.
turn wheel 3/4 way to left.
close fitting after no bubbles.

Good Luck.

Re: Desperately seeking advise on how to bleed hydraulic steering
 

System is XS Performance, add-on not full Hydraulic, and yes theese lines are temporary

Re: Desperately seeking advise on how to bleed hydraulic steering
 

My system is an add-on system too. I think they all work pretty much the same way regardless of brand.

Re: Desperately seeking advise on how to bleed hydraulic steering
 

OK, after sleeping on it, someone tell me if this is right. Since the OPPOSITE ends of the OPPOSITE cylinders push at the same time to achive the same goal, shouldnt I have to crack those same oposite ends of the opposite cylinders at the SAME time to remove all the air from that particular push cycle??

OK soooooooo providing that all my lines are routed correctly and I am starting with a full resivour of fluid and I have a steering wheel man and a fluid adding man:

start with the drives pulled all the way to the port side

have the steering wheel all the way to the port side

start engine

crack the "drive end fitting" on the port side cylinder

crack the "transom end fitting" of the starboard cylinder

turn the steering wheel to the starboard side

air should be pushed out..

once air is out and drives are all the way to the starboard side repeat process the exact opposite to purge air from "starboard to port cycle"

Does this make sense to anyone............is this correct?

I cant possibly imagine any other way it could work.

Re: Desperately seeking advise on how to bleed hydraulic steering
 

Not sure if this will help, but I'll tell you what happened to me. Boat was completely derigged, so I had to start from scratch. After putting all the steering back together (twin engine), I would get a terrible shaking when turning the wheel. Thought it was air, so we kept trying to bleed the system. After several hours of no success I sat down and drew a picture of all hoses, distribution manifold, transom mounts, and cylinders. Turns out that the somewhere in the system you have to cross the hoses. You can either cross them before they get to the transom mounts, or from the transom mounts to the cylinders. Where I messed up is in recognizing how the manifold distributed each hose from the pump to the hoses that lead to the transom mounts. Rather than crawl up in the bilge and swap transom mount hoses, I ended up swapping the hose ends on 1 cylinder. Took about 2 minutes to bleed the air and then it worked like champ. Good luck.

Re: Desperately seeking advise on how to bleed hydraulic steering
 

I don't know anything about bleeding a steering system, but one thing stands out in your pic. Most pics of steering systems I've seen have the fittings on the rams on top. Air will always rise so when the fittings are at the bottom, it may be impossible to bleed all of the air out of the cylinders. If you turn the cylinders over, the air will rise out to the hydraulic lines. Might work, might not, but it makes sense to me...

Re: Desperately seeking advise on how to bleed hydraulic steering
 

Bill might be on to something. I'm installing the XS system on my boat RIGHT NOW, and my rams have the ends facing up. Altho....., I'm having trouble getting it to work. It's acting like it's manual steering, doesn't seem to have any power assist...

If you have the lines routed correctly, the starboard trim ram fitting closest to the transom should be connected to the Port fitting on the steering rack. The furthest from the transom should be connected to the starboard fitting on the steering rack. The port ram closest fitting to the transom should be connect to the starboard fitting on the rack, and the furthest from the transom should be connected to the Port fitting on the steering rack.

I hope this is right, i'm recalling it from memory as I type..... Your instructions should have shown that.

I'll letcha know if I get mine bled and working. So far no luck. My friend is also installing it and his is having the same prob as mine, no apparent assist. He has a leak on the manifold tho that is prob causing it. We are trying to find an o-ring to fix that, so hopefully we should have some answers today or tommorrow....... :rolleyes: