Weekender Rudder Hardware Set (includes pins and rings)

This is a very robust set of stainless steel rudder hardware. The vertical gudgeon that bolts against the transom is a full 1/8th (0.125) of an inch thick and 1.25" wide. The rudder gudgeons are made from 1" wide strap and are 3/32 (0.090)" thick. The pin is 3/8" in diameter. The nominal rudder width is 1-3/4" but these rudder gudgeons can be adjusted to fit anything from 1-1/2" to 2".

You are buying two of the gudgeon sets including clevis pins and rings as pictured above. They will mount one rudder as shown on Dave Richards' Weekender as shown below:

In fact it was Dave whose inquiry moved us to make this set up in the first place. Dave wrote:

Hi Chuck and Sandra,

I hope you had a great Christmas and have a happy New Year.

Last summer some time I had an e-mail conversation with a fellow in Colorado who was building a Weekender. He said he had contacted you about pintles and gudgeons that would work on the Weekender. Due to a job change or something, he's given up on the Weekender but I'm building a new rudder box and was thinking that this coming spring would be a good time to get rid of the eye bolts and try something a bit cleaner looking. Have you got anything that might work?

The problem with the Weekender's stern is that tapered stern post. It comes up to a point and there's not much stock near the top for screws into the sides of the post. The other problem for a stock-built Weekender is that the stub tiller extends through the transom so you can't just lift the rudder box pintles off the gudgeons.

I think the best thing would be to have gudgeons on both the boat and the rudder box with a pin that slips in and locks somehow.

Have you got any ideas?

Thanks for everything.

Dave

It occured to us that we might use our RL-490 Pintles as rudder gudgeons with a specially made vertical gudgeon for the transom. I suggested this to Dave and he sent us this rendering:

We then sent this to the nice folks at Race-Lite and they agreed to make up the special vertical gudgeon. We had ordered RL-490 pintles without pins in them a few months earlier. This all takes time but soon the new vertical gudgeons arrived. Imagine our embarassment when the new parts did not match the old ones. They fit Ok, but they only allowed 20 degrees or so of movement to each side - not enough!

So we called Race-Lite and they were able to quickly see the problem and suggest a solution. That was the new rudder gudgeon you see in the picture at the top of the page. Soon the new parts were made and we sent a set off to Dave. He was able to put them on his boat and the results seem to be great. Thank you Dave for your contribution to Weekender builders everywhere.

NOTE: The vertical gudgeons in this set will also work very nicely with our RL-390 series pintles.

Feedback:

Finding a lower gudgeon for my Melonseed Skiff caused a problem for me. I tapered my skeg as the plans show, leading to difficulty using a gudgeon with 'legs' that fit on either side of the skeg, as the two sides of the tapered skeg are not parallel in the vertical direction. I found a solution -- a vertical gudgeon that attaches to the aft face of the skeg. You guys sell these for the Weekender. I bought one such horizontal gudgeon to use for the lower position and for the upper gudgeon and the two pintles (for a 1" rudder) I bought one of each of the RL-390's.

One very minor issue is that the amount to which the pintle leg holes in the gudgeons are offset from the wood they attach to differs slightly for the two gudgeons. The Weekender gudgeon is a bit 'beefier' and the hole in these is about 3/16" further away from the bottom of the gudgeon base than is the case for the 390 gudgeon. I plan to deal with this by mounting the upper pintle a 3/16" further away from the foward face of the rudder than the lower pintle is mounted to allow the two pintle pins to line up.

Steve