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St4000+ wheel drive replacement

3977 Views 7 Replies 7 Participants Last post by Brewgyver, Apr 9, 2015

chall03

Discussion Starter · Apr 9, 2015

Hi guys, I have an older ST4000+ Wheelpilot. The wheel drive and control head are both black.

The Wheel drive has of late been giving me some issues, chiefly the clutch lever disengages intermittently.

Knowing this to be an older unsupported unit potentially reaching its end of life and weighing up the effort of replacing the belt etc myself I am looking at replacing the whole wheel drive unit with the newer st4000mk2, but hoping to keep the rest of the autopilot system the same.

I believe that the St4000mk2 Wheel drive should be compatible with my existing control head, can anyone confirm this to be the case?

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BarryL

· #2 · Apr 9, 2015

Hey,

Raymarine has a pretty good forum where their product experts respond. Go here:

Discussion Forum - Raymarine Technical Forum

You can browse around and ask for help. I have received excellent support from them.

Barry

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Faster

· #3 · Apr 9, 2015

I'm fairly certain you'll be fine with that.. The drive ring is a big improvement over the original, and I think the drive motor is the same, certainly the plug matches. RM does sell the drive ring package separately as an upgrade.

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chall03

Discussion Starter · #4 · Apr 9, 2015

BarryL said:
Hey,

Raymarine has a pretty good forum where their product experts respond. Go here:

Discussion Forum - Raymarine Technical Forum

You can browse around and ask for help. I have received excellent support from them.

Barry

Except that because I am not US based they will not let me sign up on that forum but instead refer me to my local Raymarine support. I am still waiting for local Raymarine to get back to me

I have read through the threads on the forum there though and although I haven't found an explicit answer on this it seems they are backwards compatible.

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tdw

· #5 · Apr 9, 2015

CHall .... give these guys a call. When I was looking to put a wheel pilot on our previous boat these guys were a great help. Raymarine Oz themselves are as useful as tits on a bull.

Home - Olectric Systems

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Reactions: 1

PaulinVictoria

· #6 · Apr 9, 2015

Belt replacement is very simple, prise unit apart, fit belt, push back together. More likely though the clutch cam needs adjusting, or the pin is allowing the cam to slip round. I have the service manual for it, drop me a PM with your email and I'll send it over if you're interested.

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Reactions: 1

knuterikt

· #7 · Apr 9, 2015

chall03 said:
Hi guys, I have an older ST4000+ Wheelpilot. The wheel drive and control head are both black.

The Wheel drive has of late been giving me some issues, chiefly the clutch lever disengages intermittently.

Knowing this to be an older unsupported unit potentially reaching its end of life and weighing up the effort of replacing the belt etc myself I am looking at replacing the whole wheel drive unit with the newer st4000mk2, but hoping to keep the rest of the autopilot system the same.

I believe that the St4000mk2 Wheel drive should be compatible with my existing control head, can anyone confirm this to be the case?

I have done this - no problem with that
Seems to remember the fixing holes where different.

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Reactions: 1

Brewgyver

· #8 · Apr 9, 2015

Yes, they are definitely compatible. The drive is just a DC motor, two wires. As long as you're staying in the same class of drive, and you are, it doesn't matter to the control head. For example, you could take that control head and connect it to a tiller pilot - the controller literally doesn't know.

If you tried to connect it directly to a larger rotary (chain) drive, or hydraulic drive unit, then you would have problems.

One thing to check, assuming the unit was in place when you bought the boat, is that the correct wire size was used to connect from the control head to the drive unit. The PO of my boat had the ST4000+ tiller pilot installed just a couple of years before I bought the boat. The installation was done by a reputable local yard, but when I started to have issues with the GP tiller drive, I found that the wire (18 ga.) was undersized for the length of the run, which was almost 16 feet. The manual specs 18 ga is good for up to 8 feet. I recabled with 14 ga and no more issues.

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