Foot steering - best mechanism to attach steering wires?

[lin...@gmail.com]

I see crews struggling with adjusting the foot steering in 2- and 4x boats: centring the rudder and maintaining cable tension. The problem is rooted in a simplistic single screw that clamps down the two steering wires entering from left and right towards the steering foot. Often the wires would slip or break an adjusting takes several people. What is the best design to attach these wires to the footplate that ideally permits to adjust the position, permits to control the tension, does not requite multiple people, and is reliable?

-- C

[Andy McKenzie]

On Wednesday, 14 September 2022 at 16:36:16 UTC+1, lin...@gmail.com wrote:
> I see crews struggling with adjusting the foot steering in 2- and 4x boats: centring the rudder and maintaining cable tension. The problem is rooted in a simplistic single screw that clamps down the two steering wires entering from left and right towards the steering foot. Often the wires would slip or break an adjusting takes several people. What is the best design to attach these wires to the footplate that ideally permits to adjust the position, permits to control the tension, does not requite multiple people, and is reliable?
>
> -- C

Bowden cable based footplates for the win every time. It means you can get the full range of adjustment on the stretcher without having to touch the cable, change tension or risk an off centre rudder. In my experience you get a smoother steering action as well, probably because the tension is 'correct' and it avoids the sharp right angle turn that the cable make in a conventional set up at the gunwale.

[lin...@gmail.com]

> Bowden cable based footplates for the win every time. It means you can get the full range of adjustment on the stretcher without having to touch the cable, change tension or risk an off centre rudder.

Do you suggest to use one wire that starts and ends at the rudder, or two and where would these meet? I believe part of the problem is using one mechanism for tensioning and centering when two wires meet at the footplate. While that seems common for the boats I see, it seems better to maintain tension at the rudder or somewhere in between and to control only centering at the steering foot.

— C

[Andy McKenzie]

The type of bowden cable i mean has two wires to the rudder as in "conventional" setups. The cable is routed through a bowden sleeve that is fixed between a point forward of the footplate (usually the shoulder/bulkhead in front of the stretcher) and encases the cables up to a mounting point on the footplate. That way the tension of the rudder cables is completely independent of footplate position, it can be adjusted wherever convenient along the cable length. In some setups the cable tension can be adjusted by moving the ends of the bowden cable with adjusters like you would find on a bicycles brakes cable. Centering the rudder is done conventionally at the footplate.

[Lucy]

I'm a bit late to the party here, but we've started stringing our Bowden-cable systems as one piece of wire beginning and ending at the rudder end. Seems to be reducing the number of steering-related complaints.