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Installing An IMCO Stern Advantage External Hydraulic Steering System

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Bob Carpenter

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Performance boats that use standard steering are prone to experience gimbal ring wear. This is when the steering shaft wears out, and it leads to a certain amount of wandering when the boat is at high speeds. Fixing this malady is not cheap; you can expect to pay somewhere around $1,500 for a rebuild.

Now if you’re running a performance boat with standard steering and it has worn out, it’s time to make an intelligent decision. MerCruiser recommends that any boat that is going to be driven over 70 mph has an external hydraulic steering system, and it is not being conservative. MerCruiser’s exact words (taken from a 2000 installation manual) are that “it is virtually impossible to give a specific recommendation as to when external power steering should be used, as this varies from boat design to boat design. Mercury MerCruiser recommends using external power steering on boats that operate in excess of 70 mph. There are boats which operate at 60 mph that would benefit from the use of external power steering.” In our minds, if it’s time to rebuild a standard steering system, it’s really time to upgrade to an external hydraulic steering system, which costs approximately $3,500 (parts and labor). The bottom line is that the improvement in high-speed stability can be dramatic on some boats, and it’s worth every penny it costs to have it installed.

IMCO’s Stern Advantage is the perfect example of a retrofit kit that will bail a boat owner out of a bad situation and allow him to end up with a safer, better performing boat. Maveric Marine invited us to watch its crew install a Stern Advantage on a Nordic 28 that was in the shop for repairs, and we jumped at the chance. This Nordic has a 496 Mag HO with a Bravo One X in it, and the owner understood that the worn out steering problem wasn’t going to go away, so the external hydraulic steering system made a lot of sense.

IMCO’s kit includes everything you need, including the hydraulic steering arms, mounts, hoses, fittings, hardware and rear cover (for the driveshaft housing) with provisions for mounting the steering arms.

IMCO’s Stern Advantage kit provides everything needed to convert a boat over to power steering and allows you to say good bye to shaky steering control at high speeds.

Nordic 28 has a 496 Mag HO engine and can often find itself at the 70mph mark. With the worn out stock steering system, it can be a handful to drive.

Maveric’s Dan Duffin measures the transom per IMCO’s instructions.

Duffin checks to see that line is level and at the crankshaft centerline.

This is trick: the template that IMCO provides is a sticker.

Here’s a good look at the template.

uses an automatic centerpunch to make sure that the drills will be centered perfectly.

You need to check to see if you are going to be drilling through something that’s on the inside part of the transom. Duffin measures from that “something” that goes through the transom (in this case a hold down) and then makes the same measurement from inside the boat.

Duffin looks from the inside of the boat, checking for objects that are in the way.

Start out all holes with a 3/16-inch pilot hole. Run the drill backward until it is through the gel coat to prevent cracking.

When switching to larger drills, remember to run them backward until you make it through the gel coat.

After all the holes are drilled, the template can be removed.