SEA STAR HYDRAULIC STEERING Question

Just to wrap this up, for me at least, I should mention the steering I replaced was not on my Dyne, which lies waiting for TLC, but rather my Checkmate. With upgraded power on it (went from 150 to 200), it was a feedback bear to steer, hence the switch to hydraulic.
I finished the install last weekend, went with the 2.4 PRO. Went well, misread the instructions and so crossed the lines on install, which was fairly easy to detect and correct. The bleeding out almost seemed too easy. I was expecting to be repeating it once it settled overnight, but there was no need, it was tight after the initial bleed which took about 10 minutes with a helper, and stayed tight. Only difference noted was in the garage you can hear the helm tick a little as it pumps, but that cannot be heard with the motor running. Now, on the water? Spectacular improvement! No feedback! So nice! As others mentioned, you can still feel the increased steering effort from trim in positions (which I find desirable), but once trimmed out to better planed position it is indeed very light. It really has a slick feel to it, at no load you'd swear there was a cable in there, it's that concise. All in all I'm very pleased. Certainly wasn't cheap, but very worth it to me to kill that feedback bear. Thanks to Jim and all for your advice, it was very helpful!

 

Good to hear it worked out well. Did you end up with about 3.5 turns lock to lock?

How fast does the checkmate go with the 200? That could be a good reason for going with the PRO, as the higher speeds of something that is not a round bottom can create higher loads, requiring higher pressure rated check valves.

 

With a 4 blade 23 it tops out just over 60, and still has a decent pull out of the hole. The turns lock to lock were slightly less than 4, but I think I bled once more after I observed that, so it might have gone lower. No complaints on how it works either way though! The price difference for PRO ended up being even less than I originally thought, so I think it was definitely worth it, there was just no down side I could see, Cheers...Mike.