Mounting plate painted and mounted to new Seastar steering helm, mounting cylinder is next after I replace the drive lube fitting in the transom adapter, broke the damm nipple off the darn thing. Looks like a bear to get to, probably have to pull the power steering unit to get to it.......:eek:

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Gear Drive lube fitting replaced and cussing all the way through installing it, that "E" clip is a mother to get in there, if you need to do this at some point keep some spare "E" clips handy as they'll be falling out countless times and just seem to disappear in the blige when they pop out as you try to get them in, need "LOTS" of patience on this one.

With the holidays fast approaching, play time on the boat is limited. During reassembly of the Bravo 1X drive yesterday I managed to break the brass backing nut off the shift cable....:eek:, new shift cable on order as is a new water hose from the transom spigot to the motor, looked a little old figured while I'm in there replace it. I did get my new RayMarine DragonFly 7 Sonar/GPS unit and will mount that when time permits.

Can't complete the install of the Hyd Steering cylinder until I get the shift cable in, just more to get in the way. I'll just run the steering hose and move onto electricals for the time being. Adding all new battery cables (poor job on existing home made cables and not of proper gauge), new BlueSea 5511E Battery switch & BlueSea SI-ACR (charging relay) as well as new ground buss, wiring is a mess and needs to be cleaned up.

If I don't post up again for awhile, here's wishing you all a Merry Christmas :santa: & a Happy New Year :party-smiley-020:.......

Was able to get a little work done before quitting for Christmas. First off, I ordered the wrong length hose kit, needed P/N HO5116 (16 ft), ordered HO5120 (20 ft), don't know what I was thinking when I ordered that. Anyway, got the new 16' hose kit coming on 12/29. Installed the SeaStar Hyd Cylinder by screwing it onto the Merc Steering Tube. Cylinder will bottom out onto the Steering Tube and torqued to 30#. Now here's where the difficulty starts............................ you can't index the hyd. cyl. onto the steering tube, once its tight, that's where it is and that's where the wrench flats line up. The problem with this is that the wrench flats on the steering tube must be indexed to vertical or you'll have steering issues and you'll also need your hose fittings in a reasonable location for running your hoses. The SeaStar cylinder provides no method of maintaining the wrench flats in one position, it's free to spin on the steering shaft as they are one one unit. So in order to make this work I had to figure a way to hold the steering tube wrench flats vertical and this was the fix.....made a clamp that fits onto the SeaStar cylinder threaded "HEX" end. The thickness of the back plate is snug to the Merc Power Assist Cylinder. Both these plates are slotted to fit the "HEX" thereby locking it in place from any movement right to left or rotational. Also had to order 90 degree hose fittings as the straight ones wouldn't work due to the position of the cylinder as it is locked /indexed in place. I'll be back after the holidays, running all new battery cables, 100 AMP Breakers and BlueSea SI-ACR as well as a 5511e Battery switch & LED FAULT fuse panels.

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Wiring in progress:

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Looking good.

Padraig

Awesome work

Updated wiring diagram to utilize the SI-ACR starter battery isolation circuit, see yellow wire from center of SI-ACR, also added an additional fuse block for FWD & AFT. Easiest connection point for my application is as shown, pin #32 on the SmartCraft plug.

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Be careful with the rubber internal flapper on those tips. Within a short amount of time they will be sticking almost straight out all the time and will do little in they way of preventing reversion. Had a buddy hydrolock an engine coming off plane at an angle with those flappers. Just keep a close eye on them. The steering is cool. Never seen that before.

Thank you for that bit of info on the flappers, I'll keep a close eye on them.

Update on electrical diagram. I didn't include the fuse panels as I'm still trying to figure that out.

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