I have a Raymarine ST5000 Auto pilot aboard the "RAINMAKER" thats the good news. The bad news is I had never tried to use it really until a month or so ago. I'm out with my Mom, Dad, and "Tricky Ricky" on a little offshore trip of about 25 miles or so. Fished hard for with a few dolphin to show for our efforts. At the end of a long day I turn towards the inlet and come up on plane. I power up the auto pilot and let it find itself. It comes up with the course I'm on and is in stand-by. I push "track" and all's well for about a 1/4 mile or so andthe boat starts making a fairly sharp turn to starboard. I push "stand-by" and correct the course. I run along for a half mile or so and decide to try it again. I push "track" and the boat is fine for about 100 yards or so and decides to go hard over to starboard, I pushed stand-by and pulled the throttles back as fast as I could but too late!! Steering is hard over to starboard and doesn't want to come back. DAMN!!!!! Should've let a sleeping dog lie but I didn't. Managed to get some resemblence of turning to port and made our way back in. The boat would turn to starboard fine but you really had to spin the wheel to go to port..... Messed with it at the marina the next morningto no avail. Even had the marina power purge the system but no dice..... Gave in to pride and ask marina to look at it. Mechanic pulled the auto pilot pump off, plugged the lines , and steering returned to normal. Ok problem isolated.
I brought the pump home a it's been setting in the backporch ever since. Tues. night I took the pump to the shop to disassemble and find the sticking valve . The pump is nothing more than a small electric motor with a simple hydraulic pump mounted to it. I pulled the end caps? out of both sides and they each had check ball, spring , and a simple seat for the checkball. The shuttlevalve was stuck to the left of the pump ( I could not just push it out with a wood dowel) I took a drift punch and tapped it ever so slightly and it came out . It had a little corosion on it and one checkball had some corrosion on it. I cleaned it up with some 1000 grit sandpaper , cleaned the shuttlevalve until it was slick as a whistle . I then took some 1000 grit paper and put it on the work bench and polished up both checkball seats. lastly I took a 3/16 wooden dowel split it with a coping saw and made a polisher for the journal wth it.
once eveything was working smooth as silk I put a cot of black spray paint on the motor. I'm ready to hook it back up this weekend and give it a try . My moneys on it to work fine now. I also suspect the root cause of the problem was lack of use. It's an amazingly simple pump assembly once you tear into it. I'll try to post pictures if anybody wants them but I'm pretty lame at that.
I'm going to put it back together on sat. or sun. and try it out. I'll post how it does......
I brought the pump home a it's been setting in the backporch ever since. Tues. night I took the pump to the shop to disassemble and find the sticking valve . The pump is nothing more than a small electric motor with a simple hydraulic pump mounted to it. I pulled the end caps? out of both sides and they each had check ball, spring , and a simple seat for the checkball. The shuttlevalve was stuck to the left of the pump ( I could not just push it out with a wood dowel) I took a drift punch and tapped it ever so slightly and it came out . It had a little corosion on it and one checkball had some corrosion on it. I cleaned it up with some 1000 grit sandpaper , cleaned the shuttlevalve until it was slick as a whistle . I then took some 1000 grit paper and put it on the work bench and polished up both checkball seats. lastly I took a 3/16 wooden dowel split it with a coping saw and made a polisher for the journal wth it.
once eveything was working smooth as silk I put a cot of black spray paint on the motor. I'm ready to hook it back up this weekend and give it a try . My moneys on it to work fine now. I also suspect the root cause of the problem was lack of use. It's an amazingly simple pump assembly once you tear into it. I'll try to post pictures if anybody wants them but I'm pretty lame at that.
I'm going to put it back together on sat. or sun. and try it out. I'll post how it does......
