Hello all.  Tired of replacing my steering cable every 4-5 years on my day cruiser.  I had the grease fitting on the end of my last Teleflex SS "Rack" cable, but it didn't really help prevent cable corrosion.

There appears to be a new Teleflex (now Seastar) cable: "SSC154XX TFXtreme".  I reached out to them to inquire as to the internal construction (all stainless or not), but nobody has gotten back to me.  I hate that.

Uflex advertises an "armour-wrapped stainless steel core" cable.  Does this mean it's all stainless?  I dunno.  Also reached out to them with no reply back......grrrr.

Anyone have any real-life comparisons of the relative corrosion resistance of these (or any other) jet boat steering cables?

Thanks

Been working on this off/on for the past couple of weeks.  It's coming along.  Goal is to obtain more reverse thrust out of my Place Diverter, so that my wife has an easier time of putting it on the trailer.  304 stainless steel construction.  Still need to position and attach the actuating arm for the cup control cable.  Might need some lateral reinforcement too.  But it seems about as stiff as the cup that came with the diverter.  Please ignore my welding skills, or lack thereof.

Matt

Bought and received a set.  Box looks a little "aged", but the plugs are perfect.  Probably old stock that they're clearing out.  Just placed an order for another set.

FYI: If you order more than 8, the website adds shipping.  Paste the below into your web address bar.  If you use Google, it gives you a different price.

http://www.amazon.com/ACDelco-R43TS-Professional-Conventional-Spark/dp/B000C9S696/ref=sr_1_1?m=A3RYV5EESX922K&s=merchant-items&ie=UTF8&qid=1395872374&sr=1-1

So I'm freshening up my AT-309 pump after many summers of fun.  The shaft has some wear where it rides on the bowl bearings, as I would expect.  However, it's not nearly as bad as I expected after 550 hours of use.  I believe that most of the wear occurred early-on in the pump's life, when I used to run the boat on the Mississippi and Missouri rivers (lots of sand).  These bearings are water-lubricated bearing.

Since I'm the definitive tight-wad, I hate buying new stuff if there's not much wrong with the old stuff.  This shaft is a case-in-point: At the location where the wear is most severe, the shaft mics at 2.118. Virgin shaft measures 2.123.  So that's only 0.005" on the diameter (0.0025" radial/surface wear).  What I'd like to do is find some 0.010" undersize DU bowl bearings, and grind and polish the shaft appropriately.  I looked into this years ago with no joy.

Does anyone out there know of a source for undersized DU bearings?  If not, I'm going to contact GGB as to the cost of a "short" production run of undersized bearings. If it sounds remotely feasible, I'd offer them for sale to "whomever", since I don't envision ever needing 1000 (or 10,000) undersized bowl bearings.  The next question for all you guys that rebuild your pumps is what (under)size?  0.010"? 0.020"?  How many of you guys have marginally worn shafts laying around that could otherwise be put to good use?

Thanks in advance for your replies.

Matt

Passing along this "fix" to guys/gals that are still running an Olds with logs.  This helps to prevent distortion/warping on the siamese port on the log.  The photo shows the basic set-up.  It's a piece of 1" wide by 1.5" tall aluminum barstock that I attached to the top of the log with a clamping arrangement.  I filed the top of the log down a little to get reasonably good contact with the aluminum barstock piece.  The barstock is through-drilled (0.50" dia.) and tapped on each end for 1/2" NPT barbed nipples.  The water through-hole is offset (centerline is 1" away from the side that sits on the log port) to provide additional thread engagement for blind-drilled 1/4-20 tapped holes on the bottom side of the barstock piece. 1/4-20 bolts (or threaded rod) go on either side of the siamesed exhaust port, into the blind-tapped holes, to clamp the barstock piece on.  There's a thinner piece of aluminum (or stainless) barstock that spans the siamese port on the backside to complete the clamping hardware.  It has two 1/4" (clearance) holes in it for the 1/4" bolts/threaded rod.

The whole contraption goes on/comes off pretty easily.  Been running this on a set of logs for almost 20 years with negligable distortion/suck-in.  You could use some heat transfer compound to increase the conductivity between the barstock and the port, but I haven't.  I run the water through these first, then into the engine.

Other: Don't use the siamese port exhaust bolt to attach the manifold.  It'll just dump unwanted heat into the aluminum.  Use RTV instead of exhaust gaskets.

Hope this is helpful to someone out there.

Matt