Sloppy Pivot hole in swing keel Hunter 23.5

[bxdobs]

Dropped my keel to repair a crack/split in the bottom edge but also hoping to solve a wobbly noisy keel ... the keel bangs with side-to-side motion both on anchor as well as sailing upwind ... there is a stainless .75"x3" rod that holds the keel in place but there is some kind of opaque plastic sleeve/tube embedded in the keel that the rod pivots in. This tube is extremely sloppy plus there is some wear in the metal plate that holds the keel to the boat. Thinking I could:
a) upsize the rod to fit the existing tube then open the holes on the plate to accommodate the larger rod
b) replace the tube with something that has a .75 inside diam (but what material?)
c) replace the wear plates (some kind of Acetal or Teflon 1/4" thick on either side of the inside of the u-shaped holding plate)
d) add material to the outside of the u-shaped holding plate to tighten up the space available for the keel to move.

 

[ahicks]

Been here before with an early 70's 26' boat (Clipper Marine CM26 w/swing keel), but it was long time ago!
My opinion: you could do what you can to tighten the pivot pin fit to both the keel itself and the area of the boot (keel well) that supports it. In addition to that though, you need to repair/rebuild whatever supports it on each side of the keel (boot to keel clearance). If there's excess clearance that keel is going to bounce off of both sides of the boot constantly.

I never did get mine working like I think it should. We would swing the keel up any time we weren't actually under sail.

If I were to do it again, I might try installing a wear plate made of some sort of soft plastic on each side of the keel.

Noteworthy is the fact our keel was cast iron, and at about 700lbs, it was never something you wanted to mess with too much....

Best of luck!

 

[Grub54891]

The rod is usually stainless steel, they don't wear much, But the bushing's do. We did a much bigger one, replaced the bushings; Might have to have them machined. We also added nylon sleeves to each side of the keel that were attached to the bushing. Think nylon washers, only very large. I had to sand the nylon washers to fit fairly snug and it cured the issue. That was 10 years ago and the customers boat is still quiet.

 

[bxdobs]

With the idea of reusing the existing 3/4" x 3" SS Pin/Rod I am considering 2 options;
1) 1' x 1-3/8" acetal rod - will require making 2 bushings by drilling a 3/4" id hole then milling the od to about 1" with an 1/8" lip (in place of the washers Grub 54891 eluded to) would look like a 1-3/8" x 1/8" washer on either side of the keel
OR
2) found stock (nylon or acetal?) bushings with 3/4" id designed for small tractor wheels that may work (they also have an od lip on them > 1" diam)

The expectation is to drill out the current sloppy hole used by the SS Rod/Pin with a drill press ... the hope is that I can keep the resulting hole size to 1" diam ... expecting to use 4200 to hold the 2 bushings in place

For the wear spacers, I have found a 1/4" thick (nylon or acetal ?) material which I can cut and drill to fit the existing panels which are brittle, and no longer flat (expecting this may be causing the keel to move in unintended ways)

 

[Scott Danforth]

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