Dart 15 Forums

Help!

One of our members has a slight problem with his starboard rudder. It won't go down! It will if you manually push the rudder blade down. It then clicks into place. The port rudder is perfectly OK.

I discern that the blade is stiff within the rudder "stock". We have tried loosening the pivot bolt, but the two big washers remain stiff.

What is the remedy? Would a new stock including a new spring mechanism solve the problem? I understand the cost is about £60, which is worth the money if the problem is solved.

I look forward to any advice,

Andrew,
TBYC.

Andrew.
I afraid it is electrolysis, stainless and alluminium hate one another when coated with salt water, sollution as in previous letters.
Brian (1984)

Hi Andrew

I think this is the old cookie for those of us who sail on salt water at some time and don't realise the need to disassemble the blade from the stock on an annual basis to grease up the bolt through it's sleeve, or so I understand.

I have had a bit of a problem with this recently and have managed to improve the situation slightly using liberal amounts of WD-40 and silicon spray. I did try some heat (from a weak gas blowlamp onto the end of the thread) but to little avail. I also tried some hammering to try to extract the bolt but this also failed for fear of damaging the stock.

At the present time the rudders go up and down fairly easily but I think the sleeve must be rotating in the blade, rather than the bolt rotating inside the sleeve. I know that at some future point I shall have to saw through the bolt on each side of the rudder blade(s), inside the stock(s) as recommended by George Carter.

I understand that the latest replacement bolts/sleeves do not corrode together in the same way.

Here is a post on the subject which I found using "hacksaw" as a keyword:

http://www.sprint15.com/forum/viewtopic ... ht=hacksaw

Regards

Robert.

Andrew, once the blade has been dissasembled from the stock (by whatever efforts) I suggest replacing the inner aluminium sleeves with the new plastic ones from Windsport.

This is a permanent solution to the extremely common problem of corrosion between the stainless steel bolt and the aluminium inner sleeve which can prevent the removal of the bolt except by boiling water, hacksaw etc.

Incidently, the mechanism is designed with the inner sleeve slightly longer then the outer sleeve in the blade. When the bolt is tightened the washers and the bolt clamp onto the inner sleeve. The bearing surface for the blade rotation is between the inner and outer sleeves.

Chris