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Old 04-22-2015, 07:45 AM   #12
twistedtree
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City: Vermont
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Quote:
Originally Posted by psneeld View Post
Not that copper isn't suitable...it's just not the only material suitable.

Now I am talking most small boat steering....if you have something for a much larger vessel or for a special application, different story.
I guess it comes down to how small is small. I don't doubt that newer hose material will stretch less than older material. And no matter how much something does stretch, the longer your runs, the more cumulative stretch you will get. At what point does it become unacceptable? Who knows. My whaler has plastic tube (nylon, actually I think) for the steering and it works fine. My Grand Banks and Nordhavn both have/had copper tubing for all but the ram and AP pump connections. Were those boats both just built old-school, or does the use of copper really make a difference in a 47 foot or larger boat? I don't know.

What I know for sure is that if I were going to pull new piping through a boat, I would only want to do it once. I agree that running copper would be a HUGE PITA. I'm lazy, so tubing would be REALLY attractive, but I'd need to be convinced for certain that it would be acceptable (what ever that means). The engineer in me would probably be reading spec sheets on the nylon tubing material looking for expansion rates at different pressures and comparing that to copper tubing.
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