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Broken Rudder


mn2001response

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Has anyone heard of a rudder breaking off? I have a 2001 response LX and at the end of last season, while out for a cruise with my 3 year old son we had to get towed in for what I thought was a broken steering cable. Got it on the lift and find out that the rudder is completely gone, literally sheared off at the bottom of the boat. Now I don't know what the failure point of a 1" solid stainless steel shaft is, but I'd think you'd have to hit something awefully hard to SHEAR it off. I can't wrap my head around this; the boat never hit anything, there is no structural damage to the hull (a few tiny stress fractures, but nothing uncommon), to the fins, no leaks, nothing. Of course Malibu doesn't want to say there may have been a defect in the rudder and the boat is now 10 years old so it isn't covered under warranty. Has anyone heard anything like this before?

If you think about what it would take to physically shear that off you'd easily tear the boat apart. Thankfully no one was hurt, things could have ended very badly. Any thoughts??

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Prop, tracking fins, other underwater gear OK? :crazy: Sounds like something form the twilight zone. for something to have hit the rudder it would have mangled the prop. Unless of course there is a ticked off fisherman with a hack saw on your lake. :unsure:

Good luck and I would look at the shaft for tool marks.

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Agreed. That is really crazy the rest of the underwater gear is OK. The rudder is made from Nibral. It is a brass alloy that is meant to break if struck by something underwater. This basically will save the hull from damage, but it is really strange to hear it happen without prop damage.

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Only thing I can think of is if you hit something while backing up which put a stress crack in the rudder post. At that point it could break off at any time. With it being 10 years old I would be really surprised if it was a manufacturing defect.

Many years ago we where waiting for my wife and some of her friends to get back to the dock to pick us up. We had a Nautique at the time. Finally someone tows in the boat. She said all of a sudden the boat just quit moving forward and the engine was just reving freely. I pull the boat onto the trailer and the prop is gone. Unfortunately it wasn't just the prop but the shaft had sheared off right behind the strut. Looking closely at the shaft you could see that it had some sort of stress crack because part of the shaft where is broke off was slightly discolored. They swore they didn't hit anything, the boat just stopped going. It had been several years prior to that since we had fouled a prop. The prop needed alot of work but I never saw any damage to the shaft at that time. As such it is at least reasonably possible that the shaft had a stress fracture and finally let go. (It is also possible that they hit something but to their credit they stick with the story to this day.)

Luckily my friend that was with us was a machinist. We towed the boat a couple hours back to has shop and fabricated a new shaft that same night and were back in the water the following morning. Fortunately I also had a spare prop. Pulled an all nighter to get it done but it was the first day of our vacation and I was alot younger then.

Once you pull the rudder post out you might be able to tell if the post had been cracked for a while. You are lucky you weren't in a narrow channel where loss of control could have cause injury to your family or damage to the boat.

Kris

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I think your rudder must of had some kind of manufacturing defect that finally showed itself and just failed. I had a 99 Response and hit a submerged post at about 25 knots. The entire boat almost came out of the water and I thought we were going to sink. When I looked underneath my shaft strut was bent along with my rudder (about 2in back.) Nothing broke, but it de-lamanated the hull where the rudder went through. Point is, those rudder shafts are stout and you would remember if you hit something.

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Has anyone heard of a rudder breaking off? I have a 2001 response LX and at the end of last season, while out for a cruise with my 3 year old son we had to get towed in for what I thought was a broken steering cable. Got it on the lift and find out that the rudder is completely gone, literally sheared off at the bottom of the boat. Now I don't know what the failure point of a 1" solid stainless steel shaft is, but I'd think you'd have to hit something awefully hard to SHEAR it off. I can't wrap my head around this; the boat never hit anything, there is no structural damage to the hull (a few tiny stress fractures, but nothing uncommon), to the fins, no leaks, nothing. Of course Malibu doesn't want to say there may have been a defect in the rudder and the boat is now 10 years old so it isn't covered under warranty. Has anyone heard anything like this before?

If you think about what it would take to physically shear that off you'd easily tear the boat apart. Thankfully no one was hurt, things could have ended very badly. Any thoughts??

Those stress cracks shouldn't be there. That bottom should be clean. Stress cracks are a sign of trauma at some point. Are you the original owner of the boat?

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Interesting to hear that this has happened to someone else. I had this happen to our families Supra several years back. I was in the middle of an at speed turn when all of a sudden the rear of the boat got loose and spun around like a power turn. It scared me pretty good as I didn't hit anything. I took me a while to figure out my rudder was gone, much to my downed skiiers dismay (he actually swam back to the boat). Upon close inspection on the trailer we found that the rudder shaft had a stress crack at the point of sheer as could be seen in the partial discoloring in the shaft. It looked really old, probably happened by the previous owner.

This is my long way of saying look real close to the rudder shaft.

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Has anyone heard of a rudder breaking off? I have a 2001 response LX and at the end of last season, while out for a cruise with my 3 year old son we had to get towed in for what I thought was a broken steering cable. Got it on the lift and find out that the rudder is completely gone, literally sheared off at the bottom of the boat. Now I don't know what the failure point of a 1" solid stainless steel shaft is, but I'd think you'd have to hit something awefully hard to SHEAR it off. I can't wrap my head around this; the boat never hit anything, there is no structural damage to the hull (a few tiny stress fractures, but nothing uncommon), to the fins, no leaks, nothing. Of course Malibu doesn't want to say there may have been a defect in the rudder and the boat is now 10 years old so it isn't covered under warranty. Has anyone heard anything like this before?

If you think about what it would take to physically shear that off you'd easily tear the boat apart. Thankfully no one was hurt, things could have ended very badly. Any thoughts??

I broke the steering rudder off my 91 skier. But it was due to hitting a submerged stump as I decelerated. Gut wrenching loud noise when I hit. Prop, shaft, strut and fins were all perfectly ok.

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I haven't seen this in a boat, but I did 21 years flying Navy airplanes and it sounds like what is called "Stress Corrosion Cracking". What happens is that you probably had a small pit or a tiny crack in the shaft that would have been very hard to detect. Every time it torques, it pulls apart ever so slightly and corrosion forms in the microscopic crack. The crack propagates very slowly over years of use until it reaches a point where the remaining metal can no longer take the stress to operate and then it will suddenly fail. As stated above by msuwaterski, that discoloration is the corrosion that happened over a long period of time, and you should see a cleaner side to the end of the shaft. That clean part is the only structurally sound metal that was holding the rudder when it failed. Just be glad it wasn't the wing on your airplane. :shocked:

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I haven't seen this in a boat, but I did 21 years flying Navy airplanes and it sounds like what is called "Stress Corrosion Cracking". What happens is that you probably had a small pit or a tiny crack in the shaft that would have been very hard to detect. Every time it torques, it pulls apart ever so slightly and corrosion forms in the microscopic crack. The crack propagates very slowly over years of use until it reaches a point where the remaining metal can no longer take the stress to operate and then it will suddenly fail. As stated above by msuwaterski, that discoloration is the corrosion that happened over a long period of time, and you should see a cleaner side to the end of the shaft. That clean part is the only structurally sound metal that was holding the rudder when it failed. Just be glad it wasn't the wing on your airplane. :shocked:

Your explnanation is spot on but I usually hard this in realtion to older airframes (20 to 30 years old) I didn't think much about it in a 10 year old boat, thought it a bit young for this type of failier (ATP A&P USN 92-96).

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Your explnanation is spot on but I usually hard this in realtion to older airframes (20 to 30 years old) I didn't think much about it in a 10 year old boat, thought it a bit young for this type of failier (ATP A&P USN 92-96).

REW, hurry up and take your pills, too much broken english.

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Agreed. That is really crazy the rest of the underwater gear is OK. The rudder is made from Nibral. It is a brass alloy that is meant to break if struck by something underwater. This basically will save the hull from damage, but it is really strange to hear it happen without prop damage.

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All underwater gear is stainless on my 2001 Response except my prop. (it has the LS1 corvette engine in it) The rest of the underwater gear is completely fine. And no, I couldn't find any hacksaw marks from any fisherman friends either.

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Those stress cracks shouldn't be there. That bottom should be clean. Stress cracks are a sign of trauma at some point. Are you the original owner of the boat?

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All underwater gear is stainless on my 2001 Response except my prop. (it has the LS1 corvette engine in it) The rest of the underwater gear is completely fine. And no, I couldn't find any hacksaw marks from any fisherman friends either.

That explains it. Stainless is brittle. Nibral is a much better choice for underwater gear.

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Not the original owner, but boat is in extremely good condition inside and out. Near showroom condition when I bought it. I agree there was obviously some "stress" at some point to to put some very small hair line cracks in the fiberglass but they are very small. I have a hard time thinking that you can hit something so hard to shear off a 1" stainless steel shaft but yet do no other damage to the rest of the boat or underwater gear.

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Interesting to hear that this has happened to someone else. I had this happen to our families Supra several years back. I was in the middle of an at speed turn when all of a sudden the rear of the boat got loose and spun around like a power turn. It scared me pretty good as I didn't hit anything. I took me a while to figure out my rudder was gone, much to my downed skiiers dismay (he actually swam back to the boat). Upon close inspection on the trailer we found that the rudder shaft had a stress crack at the point of sheer as could be seen in the partial discoloring in the shaft. It looked really old, probably happened by the previous owner.

This is my long way of saying look real close to the rudder shaft.

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Thanks for the reply,

That's all I could come up with is either it a had a small pit from when the rudder was manufactured and eventually cracked from that or somehow it was hit hard enough to start a small crack and built over time. Haven't pulled the rudder shaft out yet, but I'll definately be looking close at the break to see if I can see something unusual. From what I could see from underneath it looked like a clean shear, but I'll now more soon. Thanks for the help.

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Has anyone heard of a rudder breaking off? I have a 2001 response LX and at the end of last season, while out for a cruise with my 3 year old son we had to get towed in for what I thought was a broken steering cable. Got it on the lift and find out that the rudder is completely gone, literally sheared off at the bottom of the boat. Now I don't know what the failure point of a 1" solid stainless steel shaft is, but I'd think you'd have to hit something awefully hard to SHEAR it off. I can't wrap my head around this; the boat never hit anything, there is no structural damage to the hull (a few tiny stress fractures, but nothing uncommon), to the fins, no leaks, nothing. Of course Malibu doesn't want to say there may have been a defect in the rudder and the boat is now 10 years old so it isn't covered under warranty. Has anyone heard anything like this before?

If you think about what it would take to physically shear that off you'd easily tear the boat apart. Thankfully no one was hurt, things could have ended very badly. Any thoughts??

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If you keep it on a lift full time is there a chance someone in another boat hit it while it was up in the air ? I have a steel houseboat that has a 1 inch steel tube ladder someone hit and i could not believe how badly they bent it.

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Your explnanation is spot on but I usually hard this in realtion to older airframes (20 to 30 years old) I didn't think much about it in a 10 year old boat, thought it a bit young for this type of failier (ATP A&P USN 92-96).

:crazy: This is a real mess :crazy:

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My prop shaft was also stainless steel and it was at least 5 years after damaging a prop that the shaft failed. At this point I would just replace the rudder and not worry too much about what happened to the old one.

Can't help but thinking about losing the rudder once on our Nautique 2001. The rudder was basically held in place by the arm that attached to the steering cable. We were leaving a beach to head back to an island we were camping on at around 1:00am. There was a full moon and we thought it would be a good idea to ski back to the island. My brother was driving the boat and when he went to take off the boat would not steer ( boat basically goes in a giant circle due to the rotation of the prop). I knew he hadn't been drinking that much so figured it was a mechanical issue. I took a quick look under the boat and the rudder was not there. I assumed it must have broke off. I pulled the floor up to get to inspect the top side of the rudder and the steering arm was laying there but no rudder post along with a one inch hole quickly filling the bildge with water. We plugged the hole to stop the incoming water but didn't have a spare rudder. We had a couple masks on board and thought, what the hell might as well try to find it. Fortunately this was a beautiful lake in North Idaho with crystal clear water and a full moon. After about 10 minutes of snorkeling around my buddy sees something shiny in about 30' of water so I dive down and haul up the rudder! I check in the bilge and all the bolts to the steering arm are still in there. I dove down again and shoved the rudder back in and my buddy tightend up the bolts and we are good to go. We opted out of a night time ski as it was now around 2:00am and we figured we had used up pretty much all the luck we had for that night. The boat gods were on our side that night. If the rudder would have fell out 4 minutes later we would have been a couple miles out in the middle of the lake in 300' of water and a 1" hole in the bottom of the boat.

So at least now you will have your own great story / mystery.

Kris

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My prop shaft was also stainless steel and it was at least 5 years after damaging a prop that the shaft failed. At this point I would just replace the rudder and not worry too much about what happened to the old one.

Can't help but thinking about losing the rudder once on our Nautique 2001. The rudder was basically held in place by the arm that attached to the steering cable. We were leaving a beach to head back to an island we were camping on at around 1:00am. There was a full moon and we thought it would be a good idea to ski back to the island. My brother was driving the boat and when he went to take off the boat would not steer ( boat basically goes in a giant circle due to the rotation of the prop). I knew he hadn't been drinking that much so figured it was a mechanical issue. I took a quick look under the boat and the rudder was not there. I assumed it must have broke off. I pulled the floor up to get to inspect the top side of the rudder and the steering arm was laying there but no rudder post along with a one inch hole quickly filling the bildge with water. We plugged the hole to stop the incoming water but didn't have a spare rudder. We had a couple masks on board and thought, what the hell might as well try to find it. Fortunately this was a beautiful lake in North Idaho with crystal clear water and a full moon. After about 10 minutes of snorkeling around my buddy sees something shiny in about 30' of water so I dive down and haul up the rudder! I check in the bilge and all the bolts to the steering arm are still in there. I dove down again and shoved the rudder back in and my buddy tightend up the bolts and we are good to go. We opted out of a night time ski as it was now around 2:00am and we figured we had used up pretty much all the luck we had for that night. The boat gods were on our side that night. If the rudder would have fell out 4 minutes later we would have been a couple miles out in the middle of the lake in 300' of water and a 1" hole in the bottom of the boat.

So at least now you will have your own great story / mystery.

Kris

What a great story!

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