St4000+ wheel question. Fix or replace?

[PineyWoodsPete]

One thing to be sure of is that a 10A fuse is installed in the hot lead to the drive motor. I learned the hard way on our '93 F-P Antigua 37 cat- purchased in Seattle in '96, with the goal of sailing from Lat. 50N on W coast (Alert Bay, Vancouver I.) to 50N on E coast (mid-Newfoundland W. coast).

I installed an ST4000 AP (black), along w/ radar, SSB and watermaker, but in the rush left out the included 10A fuse and pigtail, wiring it directly directly to a panel switch/breaker of unknown rating. All went swimmingly well though, and it performed beautifully sailing south after several months in Canadian waters, including a full gale on the tail after rounding Cape Mendocino, CA, blowing almost all the way to San Fran, making 10-18Kn under small Solent jib only. And for the two years in Baja, W. coast Mexico, Costa Rica, Panama, Rio Dulce, Belize, Isla Mujeres, Florida, Chesapeake & Delaware bays. and the Cape Cod Canal to Nova Scotia...

T'was on the last leg, on a dark and stormy night challenging the AP a bit, bound for Shelbourne, NS that the AP quit. Dead. No problem - I had a spare motor as well as belts. New motor installed - still dead, as was the control head, and the breaker hadn't tripped. Seemed obvious then that the shorted-out motor had drawn too much current through the un-protected electronics and killed the head, with over 15,000Nm's on the log since installation. We were tied up for a long two weeks in N.E. Harbor, ME waiting for parts: control head NOT sold separately, only the whole enchilada. Kee-rap!

By the time we were heading further down east in Nova Scotia, the weather window for Newfoundland had pretty much closed, and we had to settle for a cruise in the Bra d'Or lakes (pronounced Bra'dour by the locals), about 4 deg.N lat. short of our goal. As the old Jewish lament goes -"Too late smart, too soon dead"...