As it turns out, I haven't been tightening the cable in the exact manner in which it was designed. Ok..now is a good time to change that. So I crawl down into the garage and have a look. What I find is that the SS eyebolts that are supposed to be run freely inside a hole in the quadrant are in fact seized up from likely 30 years of not being lubricated. SS and aluminum don't get along very well especially without some type of barrier coating between them. I begin to weigh out the different options because by now, I'm far enough into this that I really want to have it all working properly.
New quadrant....$450.00 and as the tech says at Edson " you really should replace the chain and cable every 10 years...$285 and. How does the wheel brake work...$85 gets you a new one of those, while you're in there already...".
Or....I can take out the quadrant, put some heat to the casting and bolt and.....low and behold...out come the corroded seized up bolts. A bit of wire brushing, TefGel.....my all time favorite anti seize on the boat, and some patience, now has us with a cleaned up quadrant, perfectly good SS eye bolts cleans up perfectly. Now the final tensioning of the cable is done by threading the nut onto the eyebolt after it passes through the casting. Lots of TefGel on the bolt as it passes thru the casting will prevent the seize up in the future. I took out the chain/cable and cleaned, oiled and inspected carefully......all is well here as well......no need to replace that now. The brake......well ours works just fine. End result, the Edson tech guy tried to put the fear of God in me that the system was doomed to failure but with a bit of persistence, I feel quite good about the overhauled system. Knock on wood. Oh forgot to mention....the play in the wheel is now gone...:-))))) it's never run so smoothly!
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