Excess Play in Steering...

[ESPERANZA]

Is there a way to adjust the excess play out of the steering system. The linkage on my 97' X seems tight enough. All the play seems to be in the steering box in the helm. Any ideas guys?

[Tony D-26X_SusieQ]

If you have an autopilot installed then there is a certain amount of play that you will get used to in no time. If you don't have an autopilot then you may have a problem developing and should give the entire system a good close inspection.

[Dimitri-2000X-Tampa]

If it seems like it is actually slipping, your rack and pinion could be loose and coming apart. I had lost one of my bolts and the other three were loose back in the spring. If you try "steering failure" in the search box, you will come up with a lot of posts on it. After tightening up my stock 2000 model year steering, it seems to work fine again, with the autopilot off, it is 1 finger easy. Due to the rack being affected by gravity, it works a bit easier in the "down" direction.

[craiglaforce]

There is a little bit of play, but if yours seems excessive maybe you have one of the defective helm units. This year was a rotary helm and there have been a fair number of defective units reported where the helm gear had voids in the casting leading to early failure.
But it seems like the rack and pinion type has also had its share of failures (for different reasons)

However, several of us have had good luck with the old rotary helms. Mine has been fine. A replacement rotary helm is not expensive and is easy to install. I bought a SAFE-T teleflex rotary helm and installed it inside for a second steering position. It is in the mods section

[ESPERANZA]

I guess the big question is define excessive play. I'm guessing mine is a little over one eighth of a turn on the wheel. It is seven years old too, I think. I don't think it's ever been changes. I did notice last weekend that it was steering hard. I looked things over good and pulled my rudders down extra tight. They now angle slightly under the boat. Steering is much easier now.

Dik...

[GARY WEEKLY]

I,ve got the same year boat you do and noticed alot or what i thought was excessive play,,i checked everything and found nothing wrong,,post again if you come up with something