If your steering wheel wobbles and it's a teleflex system ...

For years, my steering wheel has wobbled about a quarter inch from side to side and up and down. I finally got around to investigating it, and discovered that the plastic washer in the picture had slipped out and was no longer keeping the steering shaft centered in the rotary unit. Just wanted to pass the info along. If you have a teleflex steering unit and your wheel wobbles you may want to pull off the helm unit and check this out.

Ahhh, mine is doing this! How do you take that apart & what washer are you talking about? That little plastic one?

Not sure how to remove, but the washer he's referring to is that white one directly around the shaft, between the shaft and the metal.

Very easy to remove, its just bolted to the helm with 4 bolts. You will need to remove the steering wheel first

That's right - I'm talking about the plastic one. On my boat I had to remove the wheel and tilt assembly to get at the 4 bolts that connect the rotary unit to the helm. I also discovered that my tilt mechanism had a fair amount of play in it, so I'm not really sure if the wobble was related to the plastic washer slipping out, the play in the tilt mechanism, or a little of both. Here's another pic of the washer as well as the (new) tilt mechanism with the wheel off. All i can say is that after reinstalling the washer and replacing the tilt mechanism the wheel is solid.

My guess is that the tilt mechanism failed, which introduced a wobble into the shaft, which caused the washer to work it's way out, which made the wobble worse.