Upgrading your stock rudder to an aftermarket one shortens the life of your steering cables. Bam at headwaters offers cable upgrades. Headwaters Kayak headwaterskayak.com
The solution is much easier than that and using the original system. I live on a busy lake and love my Natives for fishing but always raged about the short lifespan of my Titan cables. Yes, it always broke at the set screw so one day I finally realized what was wrong. The steering assembly is coming from the factory wrong! On both my Natives, when the rudder was centered, the steering handle was in line with the frame of the boat. That position puts the set screw directly at the top of the pulley so every little twist and turn puts all the stress at the set screw. Now for the solution. That assembly is in two pieces held together with gears and a screw on the bottom. Simply remove the screw, force the two pieces apart, rotate the set screw toward the left bottom of the pulley and then put the two pieces back together. Now the stress is at the top of the round pulley instead of all of it on the brass set screw. When you fasten the hand piece back down, with the rudder centered in the back, the handle should be sticking out about 90 degrees to the left. The longevity of mine is simply amazing. I have gone from averaging a week to months. I even took the Yak out in Hurricane Florence to test it and it is still good! Hope this helps someone.
Hi guys, Nico job! Have the same problem with my Native Ultimate. I‘m out on the water as much as I can and realized, that that steelwire snapped off every 6-8 weeks. What I‘m trying to do now is to use the same steelwire as before and not to change anything on the hardware, but I will turn the tillerplate that holds the cable below the handle by 180 degrees. I think, doing so, the cable will not be bend close to the fixing screw any more while doing sharp turns and because the cable will not leave the v-groove that way it hopefully won‘t get tired that way.
I upgraded to using the spectra line, I've used the berley pro and I've used other spectra cord and I cannot keep it from coming off the spool at the handle. It happens so much that I don't even take the Titan 13.5 out anymore. When I turn it the cord jumps off the spool , I've tried more tension on the cord which actually makes it worse,tried less tension and it still does it. I travel and fish alot, hobie his, bass, kbf and talking to other anglers it's a common problem that native absolutely will not address. Wondering if you have had this problem . I love the boat but if I can't take it out it's pointless to have. It's a terrible design and needs to be rethought
Finally pulled the trigger on the titan 10.5. I'm having issues with the steering upgrade though, I had the shop Install the berley pro steering kit before they shipped it out and when I installed the boonedox ruder, i noticed my ruder does not fully turn 90 degrees like your I get maybe 45 degrees of a turn. Any thoughts on what it might be? Thanks in advance
No and I dont think they should cover the cost of this cable mod/upgrade. I upgraded my rudder with the aftermarket Boonedox Rudder which was not intended to be used with the stock steering system. The booedox rudder puts a lot of strain and torque on the cables and hardware which causes it to wear out a lot faster. I dont plan to give up my boonedox rudder so I opted this upgrade. Thanks for chiming in.
@@MOBBINOutdoors Interesting take on the fact that people have to buy after market systems because the NW stock rudder is completely inadequate. Kind of like folks had to buy the shorter pedal cranks for the earlier Propel drive boats because the stock crank arm was virtually unusable. No kudos to NW.
Another great video. During camera angles on the bottom, it's looking like you have some damage going on the bottom skeg? Stuff is hanging down? What's that?
