Though this looks like the creature from "Alien" it was a breakthrough device in the removal of the damaged rudder bearing. 16 years of salt water and tropical conditions nearly welded the stainless steel collar to the rudder shaft. The jaws as seen here are pulling the collar up off the aluminum shaft with a combined force of 10, 000 lbs. Even with this incredible strength the collar moved very slowly fighting every mm of movement.
The pin you see sticking out is a 3/4 inch solid stainless shaft that holds the rudder in the boat. Omarsea's rudder is large and the waves exert tremendous loads on it when the boat is surfing down large waves.
Interestingly the damaged bushing, seen under the pin, was worn on the sides but not the front and rear. This possible accounts for the more than 1" of wobble felt at the bottom of the rudder when you held it.
I was forced to cut the collar to be able to drive the pin out of the rudder shaft. It will need to be welded back together later this week.
I started this project last August. Spent some 40 hours in that cramped steering locker grinding, cutting, sawing and well now that I think of it cursing at times like a sailor. It was a job I wanted anyone but me to finish. I devised four different engineering approaches to remove the collar and the pin. Each idea by itself was only marginally successful. Combined though, they proved to be a solid way to get the job done.
I was in Harbor freight a couple months ago and found this 5 ton hydraulic puller. It was very nearly too big to work in the space, I had to reset it seven times to get the collar completely up off the shaft. What saved me was that there is a cover plate right above the rudder shaft. It's there to allow the emergency tiller , a large metal lever to attach to the top of the rudder shaft. I was able to pass the hydraulic pump up through this opening and get the rig to work.
To give you an idea how close this came to failing. I had to force the fiberglass decking upward about an 1/8th of an inch to clear the top of the rudder shaft. By the skin of my teeth you might say. A funny thing happened about an hour later. Someone asked me what the loud western whooop was all about?
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