Squeaking when steering, any solutions?

[stan1541]

Thanks for the info. My outdrive is clean, freshwater only and no corrosion, but the squeak is audible in and out of the water. I soaked it with teflon lubricating spray and its been sitting for a week now. i'll see if it did anything. Then it might be a "add this to the list" for the winter. I've got a good mechanic buddy who also just bought a boat, so I think he and I can work on this. I think i might also video it, throw it up here, see if its something more obvious that I'm missing.

[CBO]

Going to revive this old topic. My DPS-B is making this noise, my outdrive looks to be different than the one in the above picture. I have two allen bolts at the top and cap on the transom plate. Has anyone replaced the seals, O rings, and bushings in the DPS-B? How hard of a job is it and are there any special tools that are needed?

[Big Block Power]

Does it sound like this?

[CBO]

Thank you for that video example.

I would have to say no, it's more of a creaking sound throughout the entire range of steering.
Like this…,
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[CBO]

What do you all think? It's going to be a busy winter working on this boat. My plan is to pull the drive and rebuild the upper and lower pivots as well as clean up and paint all this corrosion. The sad part about this is in May they did trim rams and pump, bellows, gimble bearing, and U joints. It appears the tech missed this small detail. Oh well, because of this noise I picked up this boat for a song.

[slideruleracer]

If you haven't watched my transon assembly rebuild video, you probably should. It sounds to me like the vertical pin at the bottom and or the steering arm at the top going through the bushings probably have corroded. The phenolic bushings are replaceable, but it is admittedly not the easiest task. To pull the transom plate off is challenging with the engine in place (not impossible, but definitely challenging).

[CBO]

Thank you for the advice, I will check out your video. After using a stethoscope the noise is definitely coming from the top pivot. I have to build an outdrive stand this weekend and then I can start tearing into this project. It will be a fun winter project for sure. I picked is boat up for 17k because of this noise. The previous owner has an extensive record of service at the dealer I got it from. The boat has 407 hours on it when the tech plugged into it to show me that there are no stored codes. This past May they did bellows, gimbal bearing, and u-joints. Been wanting a Cobalt for some time but never really found a decent deal on one till now. Nothing but nuts and bolts right!

[CBO]

Well, dove into the outdrive removal. I found that with the outdrive separated from the pivot housing I was not able to even turn the assembly left to right manually with the arm disconnected from the actuator. After removing the rest of the transom housing/ring I then worked on getting the steering shaft out. Ended up having to cut the bushing to remove it due to the keyhole in the boat being too close to remove as per the manual. My guess is the key hole was cut for the old plastic drive and the new one is slightly different. Here are some pictures of the carnage. The steering shaft is pitted as well as the bushing. The pivot housing has seen better days and will need to be replaced at this point. (FYI the old part number has been superseded by a new part number that is double the cost.) As for the pivot ring, not sure if I should replace it. Going to clean it up and go from there. It appears that the pivot housing has taken the brunt of the corrosion. The transom shield and drive seem to be surface corrosion whereas the pivot housing is very pitted and has a lot of missing material. Crazy that in May of this year a Cobalt dealer (Wont Name Names) had this apart and replaced the U joint/shafts, bellow, trim cylinders, pump, and gimbal bearing but did not fix this steering issue. Anyways, thanks to this dealer I got a sweet deal on this boat.

[Big Block Power]

Nice job! Was this a salt water boat?

[slideruleracer]

Wow, I thought the corrosion on my drive was bad!

[AsLan7]

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wow. Surprised they did not replace that after doing everything else. Thanks for posting with pics.

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[CBO]

Boat was kept on Lake Washington in WA. It does connect to Lake Union which has locks to the ocean. It looks more like electrolysis to me the way the metal is missing. Luckily, the mating surfaces on the transom shield for the steering shaft are not damaged. Talking with the local parts guy there was a recall on the DPS-B transom assemblies due to bad pours when the castings were made. Unfortunately mine is not part of that recall. At this point, I am just going to start throwing parts at it to get it back to a serviceable condition.

[Big Block Power]

Do you know which ones were in the recall? I never heard of one on them. Same drive I have.
I guess check your anodes.

[CBO]

I have no idea which ones were part of the recall. Mine is an early 2014 and does not come up as part of the recall when I type in my serial numbers in the Volvo website. https://www.volvopenta.com/en-us/servic ... formation/ Might have to do some serious interweb digging. The parts guy seemed pretty knowledgeable so I don't think he is feeding me BS. I might return for small parts, but his prices are too high for me. As for the anodes, the bottom one was in good shape, however the top one had lots of holes in it. Also not sure how the active corrosion protection system works, it was connected to the battery but did not have any lights on when I picked up the boat. The boat had been on a rack since May of this year and I was the third person to test drive it, of course the batteries were dead as well.

[CBO]

Well progress is being made. Just need to paint the drive and reinstall. Steering is smooth as glass now. Time now to move to the inside and do a tune up, replace the steering actuator, and replace the manifolds.