Gudgeon/rudderhead questions.......

[Shawn]

Just an update on this... I pulled the gudgeon this weekend. Not an easy job, two people are much better then one for this. With a U joint and a long extension climbing half into the seat lockers (and twisting and stretching) I got the socket on three of the nuts. Two through one seat locker, the other through the other. The fourth is blocked by the bilge pump hose and needed an open ended wrench on it which meant reaching that much further in to get right to the nut.

After that the gudgeon came off the hull easily. The new gudgeon (with the delrin bushings installed by Ida Sailor) didn't quite line up with the existing holes on the transom. Two were about 1/4" off vertically. I bolted the two gudgeons back to back with 2 of the bolt holes and used a drill press to redrill the new gudgeon to fit the transom which worked well. When I bolted the gudgeon in place I added stainless washers to the outside of the gudgeon with Buna-N washers to try and isolate the SS from the aluminum gudgeon to try to avoid galvanic corrosion. The delrin bushing in the gudgeon along with the delrin thrust bushings will isolate the SS pintel from the gudgeon as well.

Just waiting for the 5200 to cure before I hang the rudder.

Shawn