Steering wheel: I've heard it's a Ford Consul item but also that it's an Anglia item. Can anyone confirm?
Well I've got hold of an Anglia steering wheel but it doesn't fit. The steering wheel has a splined centre but the Albatross steering column has a slightly larger plain taper.
Can anyone confirm for certain which steering wheel Albatross used?
I hope my new Alpine floats better than my old one!
I am almost certain that the anglia steering wheel is a plain tapper and should thus fit your albatross,you should post a picture of it .Cheers John D.
I've found out, from someone who has met him, that there was a guy at Albatross whose job it was, amongst other things, to use a conical reamer to remove the splines from Ford Anglia 100E steering wheels.
I hope my new Alpine floats better than my old one!
Tatra, That is very interesting,I had no idea that the wheels were de-splined.My wheel is non standard,and I machined some steps on the inside of the boss to correspond with the tapper.Once bolted up it is very tight.My feeling is that the steering loads are far less than on a car,and if it does come loose, the ramifications are also far less!! We do have a little more open water in Scotland than you do however.Regards John d.
That's wonderful stuff, John. The wheel looks just like the grey version of the 100E wheel (de-splined) but the bright alloy (?) badge holder is something I, as a novice, don't remember having ever seen. (I'll have a search through the mountain of parts I got with the boat - it may well be there.) 2003 had previously had its badge mounted on the front deck which was unlikely to be correct although it had a typically Albatross 4BA wedge-lock nut holding it there. What you show fits in with it being mounted on that bright alloy centre and held there by that 4BA wedge-lock nut.
What has puzzled me is that my steering column is tapped in the centre to take the 4BA thread on the badge!
Thanks to your photos, I can only assume that the thread tapped in the column is a later modification.
One day, with all of us pulling together and pooling our resources and knowledge, we'll work out most of the history of these boats.
There's an Albatross Register which ought to be doing this sort of thing but registering with them doesn't give you access to any more information than is available without registering. Maybe it's not my place to say but they seem to garner information and then keep it to themselves - whoever "they" might be - and I don't think that's really in the spirit of mutual helpfulness.
I hope my new Alpine floats better than my old one!
I'm with TatraMan on this one.
Has anyone a contact with "him/them", the guy(s) running the Albatross Register website? I don't see the point into registering our boats if we don't get back at least some usual info, about history, or contacts with other Albatross owners...
However, John, I've just discovered your Picasa gallery, that's brilliant, lots of information there!
If you ever had a minute to explain to me how you managed to disassemble the steering column, that would be of great help to me!
I'm sure John can help more than I can but, in the interim, mine's the long column (later ones are short and don't extend to the bulkhead) and it came out easily enough by just undoing the five nuts and looks easy enough to disassemble further but I don't see any need to. . . . . . . yet!
I hope my new Alpine floats better than my old one!
Sham i think Tatra will be better placed to help you as i think you both have full length steering column and i only have a sort one on the A series . But the cone has a grub screw holding it to the shaft , lots of heat to free it there is no taper at that point . Then there is the housing that is bolted in from behind. There is a bearing in the housing and the lock to lock stops . If you just un bolt it from behind the hole thing should come out as one . John
You're right, mine is a long one too (no pun intended).
As you can see below, I was able to take out the whole column ; my question was more about disassembling the cone part, in order to change the bearing. It's currently working, and I know the saying "don't fix something that's already working fine", but I'd rather do things properly and change it now that everything's out of the boat.
Lots of heat you said, John? I'll try that... And maybe adapt some sort of extractor.
