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I am new to the forum. I live in Perth, Western Australia and there are not many Trojan boats or people with experience on them around. This week on my 10 M International, I had the unfortunate experience of "popping" off a compression fitting on the hydraulic steering down in the stbd quarter of the transom. When I replaced the fitting and topped the fluid reservoir and repressured the circuit to 30 PSI it was obvious that the system required bleeding to expel the air, this is where it gets really ugly! As I don't have a boat manual or any circuit drawings etc, it seems the likely place to bleed the system is at the high point at the helm area, unfortunately there doesn't appear to be any simple access to the "wheel/pump" unit and I had to try and access the bleed arrangement through a dashboard fitting I removed. Needless to say, the operation made a mess even though I tried to catch the fluid into a 1/2 of plastic coke bottle and I had hydraulic oil dripping onto the "switchboard" below, which required substantial effort to clean up.
Is there any one out there who has any experience with similar problem/solutions? My current thought is to cut an access port into the dashboard or try and modify the bleed screw with a line and valve and bring external to the dash??
On my system the Helm would leak in cold weather. WIth the seals nearly 25 years old I looked at rebuilding both the helm and the slave systems. After careful consideration I decided to replace both units with a new 2 line SeaStar system. When I did the refit and I trashed the old Hynautic documentation, however here's a link to the PDF files for your bleeding procedures.
Many thanks for your info and the link to the Hynautic pdf.
I have printed off and will be heading down to the boat after work tonite. It's summer here and sunny days with 30 deg C temps and balmy evenings makes it frustrating to have such a great boat and not being able to use it! I'll let you know how I get on.
Rob,
I still have my original system (1982) and it's as good as ever...and believe me I drive the hell out of that system! A couple years ago I put a new, flybridge helm on. So, I had to empty and refill the system with the new helm attached. I was thinkin' it would work the way you thought, but fortunately my mechanic was there and showed me how:
You can't bleed it from the top...that would be nice but nobody thought of that when it was engineered. But it's easy anyway. You just disattach the hydraulics from the actual rudder actuator down below. With that disattached, you can just crank the wheel and the bubbles will get caught in the fill-tank. Have someone crank the wheel in one direction until you see the bubbles burp-up in the lil tank. Then have him crank it the other way until you see some more bubbles.(air caught in each helm) Reattach the steering, pump her up with pressure and you're done my friend!
I had a job interview once in Perth (with the real estate developer that built the football stadium, etc) but thought it was just too far from family. Heard it's a fun town.
I am going down to the boat in the morning and will do what you state, I'll drop you a line over the weekend or on Monday.
Always wanted to go to Florida, tropical paradise! May get there one day.
Cheers
Rob
JuiceClark wrote:Rob,
I still have my original system (1982) and it's as good as ever...and believe me I drive the hell out of that system! A couple years ago I put a new, flybridge helm on. So, I had to empty and refill the system with the new helm attached. I was thinkin' it would work the way you thought, but fortunately my mechanic was there and showed me how:
You can't bleed it from the top...that would be nice but nobody thought of that when it was engineered. But it's easy anyway. You just disattach the hydraulics from the actual rudder actuator down below. With that disattached, you can just crank the wheel and the bubbles will get caught in the fill-tank. Have someone crank the wheel in one direction until you see the bubbles burp-up in the lil tank. Then have him crank it the other way until you see some more bubbles.(air caught in each helm) Reattach the steering, pump her up with pressure and you're done my friend!
I had a job interview once in Perth (with the real estate developer that built the football stadium, etc) but thought it was just too far from family. Heard it's a fun town.
