All,
I am trying to stiffen my rudders on my 80 H-16 and I got several nylon spacers from Murrays as suggested in this forum. I know I put the spacers on each side of the rudder on the lower rudder casting but do I also put the spacers on the upper rudder casting as well? The lower casting is taking 5 spacers to get it tight but the upper casting looks like it would take about 10 spacers to fill the gap.
Also, how tight should the lower casting bolt be? I can tighten it enough to stop the rudder from going down by its own weight. I have it set so it barely comes down. Is that too much?
Thanks in advance!

You don't want to tighten the casting too much. Cast aluminum is pretty brittle. With the spacers in there it should be just tight enough that its still moves freely, but that is it.

As far as the spacers, I made the mistake of buying the same ones. I ended up using a hole saw to cut some out from the side of a bucket which worked really well. The curvature of the bucket helped hold them in place while getting the bolts in.

Do the spacers also go in the upper casting?
Thanks!

The March 1997 issue of "On The Wire", Vol. 1, Issue 7, had a very good article by David Hall on Towards the "No Slop" Rudder that I used to fix my rudders. I am not sure how to access on-line these archived issues anymore, but if you give me your E-mail address, I could attach a saved copy of the article.

http://home.earthlink.net/~mattson/hobi ... ature1.htm

I this the link, I had it bookmarked.

Excellent!!
Thank you!

I've only ever used them in the upper casting. One can usually tighten the lower casting bolt to where there is no slop but the rudder pivots freely without really stressing the casting.

By the way.....if you jack up the back of your 1980 boat, lock down your rudders and jiggle them you will find that most of your slop is not between the rudder blade and lower casting but rather between the casting and the rudder pin. They make a bushing kit if you want to clean that up.

Also, depending on where you sail, you DO want your rudders to fall under their own weight. If you are taking off from the beach or anywhere there are waves you need at least some rudder control until you are in water deep enough to lock them down. If your rudders are sticking straight out, your boat heading will be controlled by wind and waves which can be disastrous.

For what it's worth to others thinking about the same mod, I used circles cut out of gallon milk jugs and stacked up to meet the depth required.