Boat Plans Wooden | Power Steering

Boat Plans Wooden

Im working on the power steering but really dont have much to post in terms of pictures. Most of the work right now revolves around routing the hydraulic lines, drilling holes, and mounting all of the bulkhead fittings. All the lines have been routed and are in the back of my truck ready for a trip to the hydraulic shop where Chuck will smash the ends on.

My hydraulic steering system is basically a power steering system. I have a pump that is driven off of a gear that runs off of the timing gear on the engine. I have a six gallon reservoir for the hydraulic fluid and a filter in the return line. The engine mounted pump drives my helm pump which is what the steering wheel bolts too via a 3/4" tapered, keyed shaft. The helm pump then sends fluid to a dual ram steering quadrant that turns the rudder. This is a pretty simple system that is what I would call robust, and should give me decades of trouble free service.

Im still waiting on the pump drive adapter from Deere, but that should be in this week and Ill then be able to finalize the installation and start posting some pictures.

Heres another diagram showing how the auto pilot solenoid valve will plumb in to the circuit.

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Boat Plans And Kits | Power steering complete

Boat Plans And Kits

The power steering system is complete and ready for oil and testing.

I finally received the auxiliary drive adapter from Deere and had little problems getting it installed. The adapter is a nice piece of equipment and the machining is top notch as everything fit together nicely. I really like this set up vs a belt driven contraption off of the front of the engine. The drive adapter is actually set up to use two pumps. I have the hydraulic power steering pump mounted on the SAE "B" side of the adapter, and if you look at the picture I have room for another pump inboard of the steering pump. I dont know how I will configure the auto pilot and if I need another pump to drive it. This drive adapter is commonly used to drive the power steering pump and also the sea water pump if that is how one is cooling the engine. Since Im keel cooled, I dont need the sea water side of the drive adapter.

The drive adapter taps in to the engines oil circuit and has a steel line leading from the engine to the top of the drive adapter. The oil enters the drive adapter at this point, lubricates the gears then is collected in the sump and is returned to the oil pan via another steel line. It took a little head scratching to realize how the lines were connected, but once I realized the logic, the perfectly bent lines fit just how the Deere engineers had planned. I love it when things actually work and work well.

Im going to get the exhaust connected along with the hydraulic system before I fire the engine. Jim at Key Power is drawing my hydraulic circuit so I can start putting the pieces together. I do know I need 3/4" hydraulic lines feeding my bow thruster and deck winch, so Im going to measure for those, figure the route and get all my bulkhead fittings installed. Ill be able to bush the bow thruster lines down to 1/2" once I get close to the tube. The 3/4" line is needed to overcome friction loss due to the long runs. Once I have the hydraulic system and exhaust system complete, Ill fire the engine and test the systems. If I have the engine running by Halloween, Ill be happy.

As I work towards the end goal of having the engine running and all of its associated systems, I find myself completing other jobs along the way. I need to install the engine room bilge pump and the bilge pump in the forward rooms while Im installing the hydraulic lines so I have no conflicts of various lines. I also need to get the water system installed to make sure all the various hard lines work together. Two months to complete these jobs seems reasonable, and to be honest with you, once the engine fires, I think Ill be on the down hill side of having all the major systems complete. AC and DC systems is on the schedule for fall if your reading this Kevin M.

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Boat Plans Stitch And Glue | Fresh water system

Boat Plans Stitch And Glue

The fresh water system is complete and ready to use. Once I finish the shower tile and connect the drains to the two sinks I have installed, I think Ill add a few gallons of water to tank #1 and test the system.

I have eight stainless water tanks under the forward sole of the boat. The tanks primarily reside in the master cabin and kids dressing room between station #9 and #5. Total capacity of the tanks are about 370 gallons. There are no tanks under the bathroom or kids cabin.

My plan for having 8 water tanks was for obvious reasons to fit them under the sole between frames and get as much fresh water on board as I could. To prevent one tank failure from taking the water system off line, I provided a shut off valve for each tank. The tanks are connected in series, so this required a valve at the tank along with "T" connections. Because I wanted to have the ability to take any one tank off line, I manifolded the vent lines and fill lines together on both the port and starboard side. I have a one fill and vent manifold on both the port and starboard side of the boat. I can close any one vent or fill line via a valve at the respective manifold to totally isolate any one tank. The vent lines are 3/4" from the tank and connect together via a 1" manifold that leads above deck. The fill lines are 1 1/2" that lead to an 1 1/2" manifold that reduce down to 1 1/4" leading towards each tank. I used flexible sch. 40 PVC for the most of the fill lines and 3/4" rubber push lock hose for the vents. All the manifolds and fittings are rigid, sch. 40 PVC with pressure fittings. The picture showing the fill manifold also shows my engine room bilge pump and forward cabin bilge pump discharge lines. The bilge pump are 1 1/2" discharge. The overboard discharge for galley sink is just forward of the bilge pump discharges. In this picture, the galley sink discharge is not connected yet, but you can see the fitting, painted white, welded in to the hull. This is a busy area of the boat with a lot of piping between station #9 @ # 8.

The series connections for the tanks happen in the bilge area at the center longitudinal frame of the boat. The common line manifolds together forward of station #9, which is the water tight bulkhead separating the engine room from the master cabin. The now manifolded lines pass through the water tight bulkhead via a water tight seal and the now one line enters the engine room where the pressure pump resides. In order to keep an eye on the water level in the tanks, I made a simple sight gauge out of clear SCH. 40 PVC. By closing the valve leading to the pump and opening the valve leading to the sight gauge, I can see the liquid level in the tanks. I have a threaded cap on top of the site gauge Ill have to loosen to let air out of the gauge to get an accurate reading. The gauge is easily accessible by removing a sole panel. The gauge is threaded into a "ELL" fitting and is easily removed for cleaning or replacing.

The pressurized supply line travels under the engine room sole where it passes through another water tight bulkhead via another water tight seal and ends up in the lazarette where the water is distributed to the rest of the boat via a PEX distribution manifold.

I used a home style water heater that hangs from a bracket on the wall. The water heater uses a 1500 watt element, so it will pull 12.5 amps @ 120 volt. Im going to leave this device off of the inverter circuit, and commit to using the generator when I need to make hot water. The tank is 8 gallons, so we will be able to store enough hot water for hand washing and dish washing. When we want hot showers, well have to fire up the generator. I do not trust the wall hanging bracket to hold the water heater fast in many boating situations, so Im going to strap it to the wall with some sort of straps.

I located the pressure pump in the engine room under the work bench and below the steering hydraulic reservoir. This location is still easy to get to regarding maintenance, but it was not my first choice. I can easily sit on the engine room floor and do any service work or repair to the pump without having to get in any contorted position. All through the build, Ive been trying to build with maintenance and repair in mind, and I dont want to design or build any system that requires a contortionist to work on things. I decided to use a moderate priced pump system that was sold as a unit. The unit is four GPM with the cut off switch set for 45 psi and the cut in set at 30 psi. There is an inline strainer before the pump and a small accumulator tank after the pump. I would have liked to have a little larger accumulator tank, but well just have to see how this unit performs. The accumulator tank is a tank with a bladder in it that stores water pressure so the pump does not have to run every time the cold water is turned on.

I used 3/4" potable water grade suction hose with stainless wire in it for the suction side of the pump, and 1/2" PEX for all the pressure side. The suction hose is fitted with barb fittings and hose clamps. Id prefer to have compression fittings, but hose clamps seem to work better in the bilge space and they are less expensive. Because of the mounting issue of the hot water heater, I added bronze unions to make the water heater removal a quick and easy job. I also added quick release fittings at the pressure pump to make pump removal easy.

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Boat Plans For A Chesapeake Deadrise | Power steering part II

Boat Plans For A Chesapeake Deadrise

Im still waiting for the auxiliary drive adapter from John Deere. On Thursday, the Deere marine dealer called me to let me know the part had shipped, so I should see it on Monday as it was shipping from Ashland KY. Im not in a big hurry for this part, but if I were depending on this type of service or made my living off of getting repair parts in a a relatively short time, Id be quite pissed at Deere about now. Ive owned CAT equipment all my career, and to be honest, no one can hold a candle to how fast CAT gets parts to contractors. Im not going to beat this horse any more, but Ive never waited more than 24 hours for a CAT part.... NEVER.

All the hydraulic lines Im able to install without having the drive adapter are installed. The lines had to pass through two water tight bulkheads en route from the engine room to the helm then to the steering quadrant. I used bulkhead fittings to get through the bulkheads and maintain the water tight integrity of the bulkhead. The bulkhead fitting also breaks the lines down in to shorter runs, which helps the manageability of the system.

A few things are starting to look like I did some things right in the previous stage of the build. It has turned out to be a good thing that I bolted lumber to my steel framing to screw the various floors too. Ive had all the engine room floor plates many, many times, and having the lumber to screw the floor panels too, vs screwing to the floor material directly to the steel framing, has made removal and replacement of the panels a breeze. I held the lumber proud of the steel framing by 1/16th of an inch, so I dont have any aluminum touching any steel which should help with rattles. The lumber is also making running mechanical systems much simpler and quicker as it is much easier to run a screw in to the lumber for attaching clamps vs through bolting through the steel. The lumber to steel idea has for sure made my life easier. I still have water lines, electric lines, and more hydraulic lines to install beneath the sole, and I know it is going to speed things up and make a hard job easier due to having the timber frames bolted to the steel frames.

Because my lines are fixed between bulkheads, and no line will see any movement, I have a feeling the hydraulic lines will last many, many years. The only place I will have movement of any parts is at the steering quadrant. Because of the slight movement the steering quadrant will have upon the hydraulic lines, I decided to use a short jumper line between the cylinders and a bulkhead fitting vs having a long line directly from the water tight bulkhead to the cylinders. I attached a two inch piece of angle iron the the aft wall, and used two bulkhead fittings to make the connections. Since I have some hydraulic hose left over, Ill probably make a spare line for this area and in case the movement in the quadrant causes a line to fail prematurely. So I have a relatively set of long lines starting at the water tight bulkhead terminating at the angle iron bulkhead fitting, then two short jumper lines connect to the slightly moving quadrant.

I installed the seven gallon reservoir underneath the work bench next to the engine. I threaded a filter in to the reservoir, and have the return circuit running through the filter. The reservoir has a site gauge on it with a built in thermometer. To make filling the reservoir easier, I extended a 1" fill neck with a vented cap up to the work bench elevation. The " low " level on the site gauge is 4" above the pump elevation. The pump needs to be gravity fed and it was critical to keep the oil level above the pump at all times.

I kicked around the various routes I had to get the hydraulic lines from the engine room to the helm and back again for while before I committed to install the lines. I decided to run the lines from under the engine bed, through the water tight bulkhead @ the center of the boat, then up the wall of the master cabin and in to a chase in the master cabin ceiling. Im going to have to create a chase to hide the hydraulic lines that run up the master cabin wall by the water tight door, but this will solve a few problems in doing so. Ive decide to use this newly created chase to run the throttle control and shift cable controls for the main engine. I also will use this chase to run the hydraulic lines for the deck winch. The ceiling chase is getting crowded, but I know I have enough room to install the shift and throttle cables. I am questioning if the winch hydraulic lines will fit in the remaining space since those are 1/2", and things are getting tight up there. I do have another framed ceiling chase next to this one on the other side of the longitude ceiling beam, so I can always use that chase. The unused chase Im speaking of is going to be for my DC home runs from the engine room, and the AC lines feeding the air conditioner that will reside under the steps.

Im clamping all the hydraulic lines using galvanized rubber coated clamps and stainless screws. Any place I have four lines running together, I clamped two of them with the steel clamps, then used plastic cable ties to tie the remaining two lines to the better clamped set. Any place I have two lines, I steel clamped one line, then cable tied the other to it. I had ordered two boxes of clamps from the Parts Connection, and the other day, I gave one of them back. This week on one of my visits to the Parts Connection, Im going to get back that box as Ive been burning through the clamps. I dont want any moving or chaffing of these hydraulic lines. Any place I installed lines through metal framing ( when not using bulkhead fittings) I hole sawed through the metal and installed a rubber grommet. 1 1/4" grommets were a little tight for two 3/8" lines together, so I upped the grommet size to 1 1/2"

The size of the steering wheel is something that has been eluding me, and I really dont know how big a wheel I want. I mocked up a few sizes, but am afraid to commit to anything. I found a used 18" destroyer wheel on Ebay, and paid the stupidly cheap price of $1.00 plus $12.00 in shipping. The wheel is missing the cap, but I could lathe one out of Cherry, and call this a done deal. At least I can use the wheel to test the steering as soon as I finish the job and get the engine ready to fire. Hard over to hard over on this steering system will be about three turns, so a large wheel is not needed for torque. 18" might work, but seems a little small to me.

The helm is mounted to a piece of 18" channel welded and braced to the floor. All the helm cabinetry will be in Cherry, so you wont see that beautiful piece of channel steel. The channel makes for a nice stout mounting tower for the helm and hydraulic lines, and thats all I cared about.

I dont think installing the pump drive adapter is going to be a big job, so I am looking to have the steering system wrapped up by next weekend. Ill post some more once I have the drive adapter installed. I might connect the exhaust at that time and fire the engine.



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