Hynautics hydraulic steering on a 60’ maple leaf

[IguanaSwim]

We have a difficult problem with our autopilot, which hasn’t worked since Trinidad, and we’ve handsteered the last 1500 miles, but hope for a solution for the next 2500 and forever. We’ve gone through three sets of mechanics, on autohelm and hydraulic steering, to no avail; tech support lines have also led nowhere.
Our boat is a Maple Leaf 60, a cutter that dates from 1983, with three major refits.* The last, in 2019, saw the installation of a new Garmin Reactor 60 Autohelm, which meshed successfully with our hydraulic steering, a Capilano reservoir leading to two Hynautic 8K rams.* The system worked well for 4 years; we racked up about 20,000 NM with it.
But in Trinidad, a butt-- that is, of a guy fixing in the rudder room—accidently flipped the bleed valve on the set up, and replenishing it with new fluid, bleeding it of air every which way, even disconnecting the SmartPump, has led to persistent failure to lock to lock on the dockside wizard.* We found that with an occasional success of lock to lock, we couldn’t complete the autotune, standard or alternative, on sea trial wizard.
We’ve bled all bubbles, to no avail.* Maybe some persist; when steering manually, especially to starboard, we hear some crunching, possibly micro bubbles, but certainly we meet with no wide gaps where nothing happens, no apparent long stretches of air.
On lock to lock, we’ve been able to advance somewhat, formerly stuck on one side (port?), we can how get to the middle of the gamut, but its stalls at center and we get “failure” yet again.
Our technicians telephoned Garmin; they prescribed a new smart pump.* We bought and installed that, and it made no difference.* I guess their help line is a profit center.
We had a Garmin authorized technician move more CCU to a less “noisy” area; that cost $1000 but our problem persists.
We do not know what to do next, and are presently in St. Augustine, hoping for miracles (we are beneath the huge cross.) Or we are hoping for some wise person to suggest how to fix this problem, which is wrecking our cruising life.
Maybe there’s a Hynautics installer somewhere; we think the problem roosts there, not in the autohelm set up.*
The steering works as always; she takes 14 turns port to starboard but she’s a big boat.* Could that be too much volume for the smartpump?* But it wasn’t before…
Given the manual steering is fine, and the problem resides in the autopiloting, it could be the hydraulic problem lurks within the piping from smart pump to one, then the other, of the rams?
I have no idea, please send your notions, we’re desperate!
Thank you in advance.

[Chotu]

it’s pretty difficult to start guessing without a diagram of the plumbing.

however, if the manual steering works fine lock to lock with those rams, that basically eliminate everything except the part of the plumbing that the autohelm pump is in.

is the new pump the correct size? Is it an identical replacement of the old?

was any electronics updated? Is it size properly for the volume of hydraulic fluid you are moving? You said it was a lot.

also, was the new pump installed properly? Proper positive and negative terminals on the wiring?
Low pressure return line if it has one?

[Chotu]

One more thing. I can tell you from my own experience with putting in a Raymarine pump this year, that all electronics probably need to be updated.

mine didn’t work either for quite a while. I was tearing my hair out. Once I updated everything to the same brand new version, everything started working.

I had to update the course computer. I had to update the electronic compass/pitch yaw sensor, I had to update the brain that makes the pump work. I also had to update the auto pilot computer itself.

In my case, introducing one new piece of hardware into the system required a complete system update of every piece of electronics. Something to think about.