Re: Rack/Rotary, Kill switch
Can anone tell me if a dual rack steering system is better than a dual rotary system?
With another tube mounted on the motor (to install dual cable system), is it going to affect how far I can trim the motor up?
I also need to install a kill switch. Is that something that can easily be done? If I buy new controls for my motor, one that has a kill switch built in, will it be "plug and play"? Or will i have to modify still?
Thanks - Gary
To answer the last question in the other thread on this topic, 12'.
Steering systems have different reliabilities, different abilities to handle engine and cornering torque, and different amounts of backlash, or free play.
The faster you go, the more important these characteristics get for the safe oeration of the boat. At over 50, if you break your steering, the boat's going to hook, maybe upset, and probably put you right through, not over the gunwale as you leave the boat. It's a bloody, not pretty experience.
Over 50, most boats are up on a narrow pad in the center of the hull, and pulling the chines out of the lake, or lightly touching the lake with the chines. If at that time, you turn slightly, that chine will dig and increase the motion. If the steering has any free play in it, it will walk back and forth on the chines (chine walk) and that can get to the point you lose control and hook the boat, just like losing steering.
There are guidelines on the web pages and on the component boxes of the suppliers of boat steering aparatus. They are based on experience and design engineering.
It's your boat, your set of performance expectations, your decission.
The tube usually clears on tilt up. It's the steering arm that hits. With the motor on the transom, it goes into the motor well. On a 6 inch jack plate, with the motor low, it'll hit the transom. On a deeper jack plate, it clears behind the transom into the jack plate cavity. The steering tubes are parallel, and only about 1/2 inch apart.
I'm surprised your controls don't have a kill switch built in. It's a hooded toggle switch either on the face, or under the key switch. A lanyard fits between the switch handle and the hood in a way that if the lanyard is pulled, it opens the switch.
If you don't have anything like that, it's easy to hook up an aftermarket kill switch to the switchboxes in the motor, or cut into the harness and pick up the kill wire there. Mercury motors short the kill wire to ground to shut down the engine.
hope it helps
John
