Selfsteering gear ..

[GILow]

Originally Posted by roverhi

The nylon bearings are what locked up our Aries. For some reason they expanded and bound the pendulum servo rudder so it wouldn't turn under the direction of the Wind vane.

This issue came up when I was looking at how to build my own wind-vane steering system. A bit of googling around revealed that nylon does absorb water.

A quick-and-dirty google right now found this reasonably well written thesis....

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/b54...e07416ce9c.pdf

[El Pinguino]

Originally Posted by GILow

This issue came up when I was looking at how to build my own wind-vane steering system. A bit of googling around revealed that nylon does absorb water.

A quick-and-dirty google right now found this reasonably well written thesis....

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/b54...e07416ce9c.pdf

Mine has two bearings in total... shortly after fitting to the boat it became very stiff.... turned out nylon bearings had been fitted in error... yes it expands....

Don't know what you should use but it isn't nylon..

[GILow]

Originally Posted by El Pinguino

Don't know what you should use but it isn't nylon..

Well, I’ve built mine based on no bearings, just stainless on stainless. I’ll see how that goes. Early trials are promising but the true test will be a few years of use.

[newhaul]

Originally Posted by El Pinguino

Mine has two bearings in total... shortly after fitting to the boat it became very stiff.... turned out nylon bearings had been fitted in error... yes it expands....

Don't know what you should use but it isn't nylon..

Teflon as it is non hydroscopic would be my choice if I were needing to replace bearings