Home › Forum › Ask A Member › Vintage linkage ? › Re: Vintage linkage ?
You needed two hands to operate the old motors, one on the tiller, the other adjusting the carb and operating the magneto advance so steering from up front wouldn’t be very practical. Lots of old boats equipped with a steering wheel had it mounted in the rear cockpit so the driver could rope the motor over and adjust it with one hand while steering with the other. Remote controls allowed the steering wheel to be mounted up forwards.
When I was a kid, our Newfie neighbor would take us out crabbing in his old clinker boat. It had a green Johnson motor, probably a TD or TN, and had forward steering. It looked like a fence picket mounted to the side of the boat on a hinge. The cables from the motor laced thru the boat and were tied onto this piece of wood. When it was pushed forward, the boat would go one way and when pulled back, it would go the other way. The boat probably had proper cable steering at one time but I bet he didn’t want to buy some new clothesline when it broke and came up with this fix. I don’t remember ever seeing a steering wheel or cable drum in it so he might have taken that out at the same time.