We had experienced increasingly spongy steering with our T48DS, especially after moving from San Diego to San Francisco (and our main started to bag out badly!)  When it began to jump cogs in the binnacle under high stress no matter how tight we made it, we knew we had to fix the problem.
 
The two pictures of the original installation, with blue Whitlock cable sheaths show one of the causes – while the cable was wearing internally, the real issue was the two 90 degree turns each leg made on its way aft from the wheel.  In addition, the components were undersized, which is why they were wearing out.  When the yard guys called Whitlock, they said that would be a great steering system – for a 36-footer!
 
The folks at KKMI (Thanks Mark & Jock!) came up with the solution – we took out the two 90 degree bends by installing two sets of 90 degree shivs – one set on the hull below the binnacle, the other set with one on each side of the quadrant aft.  The pictures with black cable are the new setup.  The shivs under the binnacle are bolted onto a sheet of G10 that is in turn bolted to two pads that were epoxied to the hull on both side of the prop shaft.   The two shivs aft are installed in welded aluminum frames that were sized to fit the available space outboard of the two main fore-and-aft beams alongside the rudder bearing/quadrant.  The visible “rod” between the two shiv frames is a long piece of all-thread encased in a piece of SS pipe to ensure that the two frames did NOT move relative to one another.

The cables run beneath the tank as before, but there is a grease fitting installed halfway between the binnacle shivs and the quadrant.  These grease fittings have extension tubes attached so they can be accessed from below the centerline queen bunk.

All of the new parts that weren’t fabricated (cable sheath, end fittings, grease fittings and shivs) came from Edson, mostly because we could get them in a few days as opposed to many weeks from Whitlock.  The quadrant and binnacle are still Whitlock and work fine, and I’m sure Whitlock components would have worked just as well.

The job wasn’t cheap, but we sure enjoy having non-spongy steering and not worrying about the chain skipping cogs when we accidentally load up the helm!
 
Hartley Gardner
S/V ATSA
T48DS #063