was hoping that I could get some feedback on converting to Fly By Wire
What do you mean by Fly by Wire? Electric steering?
What outboard/s
What year hydraulic steering components?
There is no electric steering conversion kit i am aware of, except you buy a outboard who has it already built in.
I had many outboard combinations and all with Seastar helm pump and hydraulic piston/s and none of my boats had stiff steering. Not even my BW 23 Outrage with twin Yamaha 150HP 2 stroke, HDPI and then F150.
Stiff steering is mostly a binding steering tube due internal corrosion aka rust and im most cases due old, hardened and/or inappropriate grease when using the grease gun to grease the steering mechanism.
When you grease the zerks you need to pump so long till grease squeeze out on top and on the bottom of the steering tube. If this does not happen or is neglected there is most likely a plug of old grease plugging the tube and avoid that the grease can fill it completely.
If this is your case then use a heat gun on low setting and slowly warm/heat up the vertical steering tube and try to use the grease pump to break the grease plug free. Do that so long till the grease plug becomes soft and get squeezed out and continue pumping till the new , fresh grease comes out. Do not overheat the steering tube nor damage the other things around!
The last resort would be unscrewing the zerks and fill the tube with CRC or WD-40 what would slowly dissolve the grease, but thats a messy job and you need to pump in a lot of fresh grease to clean the steerin g tube from the CRC/WD-40 to avoid that fresh grease get dissolved too.
The other, but less frequent problem could be on your hydraulic system, helm pump or hydraulic piston.
To verify what is the problem, disconnect the hydraulic piston and turn the outboard by hand, they should turn freely.
If they don't turn freely then steering tube is binding, if they turn freely then most likely your hydraulic system is the culprit.
