update queries and unprintables

Sorry to keep bugging y'all.

I have inappropriate char(9)s popping up in various places in a table. Not a problem except that I'm exporting it to a space-delimited file, and they're messing up the formatting. So I'm trying to get rid of them with update queries. It's not working. Can anyone tell me why?

Here's an example of one of the update queries:

update elig set emembno = '' + right(emembno, 10) where substring(emembno,1,1) = char(9)

I run it, the char(9) is not replaced, it stays there.

Thanks.