Reel Chronicles...

Started by FloridaFishinFool, March 16, 2017, 07:32:42 PM

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FloridaFishinFool

#325
Yeah SHC it is kind of weird using such an old slow speed reel. I crank and crank it and lure hardly seems to move. Lots of power in there though.

Words are the exercise for the brain. Words are life expressed... without words we die a slow meaningless death. Silence to the grave is no way to go! So live! Use words! Power of the pen is sharper than any sword! Make it so! Mom said don't surround yourself with idiots! Fly higher than the Eagles... and don't run with the turkeys! Deus Vult!

FloridaFishinFool

#326
I made some pawn shop rounds yesterday and today. It is amazing how many broken rods- and I mean uselessly broken in half rods- are for sale in pawn shops.

I did come across one mint condition shiny as new 13 Fishing reel. A white origin lefty 8.1:1 speed. It was on a useless broken rod for $39. When I say useless for a broken rod, if it is suppose to be a 7' rod and only 5' or less is still there... It is a rod beyond repair to me.

I probably could have scored the reel for $25 . It sold new for $90. I passed it up but its still there... maybe...

Anyone in Orlando area can grab it cheap at cash America pawn on 436 semoran Blvd. Just south of university Blvd. Next to full sail college.

I made a nice score today with an Abu Silver Max 3 righty baitcaster in excellent condition on st. Croix rod for $10. I'll flip the reel in our shop for a little profit and get the rod for free.
Words are the exercise for the brain. Words are life expressed... without words we die a slow meaningless death. Silence to the grave is no way to go! So live! Use words! Power of the pen is sharper than any sword! Make it so! Mom said don't surround yourself with idiots! Fly higher than the Eagles... and don't run with the turkeys! Deus Vult!

FloridaFishinFool

SHC I was thinking about you today when I passed this up in a pawn shop for $20. I probably could have gotten it for $15, but I passed it up...

I could get maybe $20 for the rod and on ebay around $50.00 for the reel, so $20 was not a bad price. Aren't you a big fan of these round abu reels?

I use to flip a lot of these...

Words are the exercise for the brain. Words are life expressed... without words we die a slow meaningless death. Silence to the grave is no way to go! So live! Use words! Power of the pen is sharper than any sword! Make it so! Mom said don't surround yourself with idiots! Fly higher than the Eagles... and don't run with the turkeys! Deus Vult!

SteelHorseCowboy

Huge fan of round Ambassadeurs. Not a fan at all of that handle though, the knobs get wobbly and stiff pretty easily.

And the rod is actually a halfway decent cheapo. Not great by any means, but by far not the worst out there.

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FloridaFishinFool

#329
True, but these are quick money makers in my rod and reel shop. Get 'em cheap, do a quick reel overhaul and put it up for sale and make a quick couple of twenties.

People are always wanting a good combo on a quick buy here in central Florida.

I see these reels all the time and I use to jump on them, but not any more. Got too much other stuff to do which is why I have been slacking around here.

But as soon as I saw this reel I thought about you and your posts on reels like this one.
Words are the exercise for the brain. Words are life expressed... without words we die a slow meaningless death. Silence to the grave is no way to go! So live! Use words! Power of the pen is sharper than any sword! Make it so! Mom said don't surround yourself with idiots! Fly higher than the Eagles... and don't run with the turkeys! Deus Vult!

FlatsNBay

FFF, just curious. Does your shop know that you take pictures of customer's reels and post them on the internet? I'd be afraid that if I took my reel to your shop, you'd post all of my mistakes on the internet.

FloridaFishinFool

#331
Why sure! I don't post names along with reels.

All anonymous reels! Unless it is one of mine...

I am posting some more tomorrow.

The reason I did this thread was just to show common problems and issues. I had hoped it would just be an informational thread. No one would be identified in any way, especially here.

First up is a quick fix twitchin' bar reel I am curious about. Turning the handle and the worm gear is not turning. All else "feels" OK. Reel looks like new, so I am curious what the fail is.
Words are the exercise for the brain. Words are life expressed... without words we die a slow meaningless death. Silence to the grave is no way to go! So live! Use words! Power of the pen is sharper than any sword! Make it so! Mom said don't surround yourself with idiots! Fly higher than the Eagles... and don't run with the turkeys! Deus Vult!

FloridaFishinFool

First reel on the bench just needed a bearing and cast control cap.

I think I dug up probably one of the last that we have to service these reels. These parts have not been made for years and years and not available from Shimano either. A BNT1487. I even did a quick check on ebay to see if the part was available there and it isn't.

But this one is back in business for another 20 years... A Citica CI-200, almost identical to the old curado B green bean series that made curado famous. Even some of the parts are identical and interchangeable...

But for the shims, I had to dig around to find some...



Words are the exercise for the brain. Words are life expressed... without words we die a slow meaningless death. Silence to the grave is no way to go! So live! Use words! Power of the pen is sharper than any sword! Make it so! Mom said don't surround yourself with idiots! Fly higher than the Eagles... and don't run with the turkeys! Deus Vult!

FloridaFishinFool

#333
This next reel is a Daiwa MF100TSH. One of Daiwa's lower end reels with a retail price when new of right at $100 and now they are over priced on ebay at $40 used.

This one has a problem with the worm gear not working. And the customer wisely does not want to completely overhaul the reel, he only wanted the immediate problem with the worm gear fixed and nothing else. We call these a quick fix.

This one was fun to diagnose because nothing was obvious to the eye once opened up...



I started taking the handle off and noticed scratches around the handle nut... this indicated right off the get go someone had been inside of this reel.

I do appreciate how Daiwa puts these markings on the handle so we can properly align the nut for the cover...



Removing the drag star and I found dark brown or almost black grease. Heavy, thick, paste of a grease that is not suppose to be there in this location... and it was all over the AR bearing too where it is not suppose to be.

Look at the ring of grease on inside of drag star and on drive shaft.



Opening the reel and I found excess grease slung around inside the reel. There is a line of useless grease on the inside of the cover. Sometimes people use too much grease!

And that black grease is on the AR bearing...



Another minor issue I found inside the reel was a blob of factory type of grease on the spool's inductor and also inside the magnets. Clearly this blob of grease connects with each rotation and could slightly slow it down. So I cleaned it off. The inductor and magnets are suppose to be free and clear of grease and oil.



The grease is also visible smeared around the inside ring in lower portion of photo. More than likely a manufacturing mistake no one corrected at the factory.



Now to the problem of the reel. I bagged and tagged it before taking photos... but I had the schematic handy.

Whoever got into this reel lost a shim under the pawl cap #53. And it also appears someone tried putting the wrong pawl into this reel that was slightly longer than what should have been in there.

And because it was longer, if the person who owned this reel tightened down the pawl cap, it would bind up. So he tried using it by backing off the pawl cap and running it loose. But it did not work. The pawl was binding in the worm gear and jamming it up.

And when this reel's pawl and worm gear jammed, the owner kept cranking the handle destroying the worm gear assembly #47. The gear that snaps onto the worm gear was rounded on the inside, not the gear teeth which looked good. What broke was the plastic rounded out the inside of the gear and just spun on the worm gear. The whole worm gear assembly has to be replaced.

When I removed the pawl, the worm gear would turn. Put the pawl back in and it jammed up instantly. Wrong pawl and broken worm gear assembly.



Since these reels are kind of rare, we see maybe a handful each year, we don't invest in stocking all the parts for this reel, but they are still available from Daiwa.

I decided to write it up and bag the reel and let the customer decide if he wants to fix it because the price of this repair will be about equal to what the reel is being sold for on ebay used.

I want to give the customer the option of making this decision. Now if it was a $300 reel I would go ahead with it, but not one like this one. I don't want to order parts and then find out the customer does not want it fixed.



I use to own one of these reels because someone wanted a lefty repaired last year but never came to pick it up. I wonder why??? I tried using it one time just because I wanted to try this twitching bar gimmick. What a waste of time. I got rid of as fast as I could.

Words are the exercise for the brain. Words are life expressed... without words we die a slow meaningless death. Silence to the grave is no way to go! So live! Use words! Power of the pen is sharper than any sword! Make it so! Mom said don't surround yourself with idiots! Fly higher than the Eagles... and don't run with the turkeys! Deus Vult!

FloridaFishinFool

#334
You gotta love it when these come in the door!





Customer attempted to replace the worm gear himself. And that is where he ran into trouble... on this old Shimano Corsair. He even lost the pawl and pawl cap.



And 10 or 15 minutes later and a working Corsair again. No cleaning. No lube, but I did oil the spool bearings for him and cleaned up what I could from the outside. He'll get some more fishing out this one. Hopefully he'll stay out of it next time...  :-*

I'm not even going to charge the shop for this one. A freebie for the shop today...


Words are the exercise for the brain. Words are life expressed... without words we die a slow meaningless death. Silence to the grave is no way to go! So live! Use words! Power of the pen is sharper than any sword! Make it so! Mom said don't surround yourself with idiots! Fly higher than the Eagles... and don't run with the turkeys! Deus Vult!

FloridaFishinFool

#335
The boss said jump on 3 abu revo3 STX reels. A rush order. Move them to the front of the line. Get 'em done ASAP! So I got to one of them this afternoon...

a filthy dirty reel! He is using braid heavy enough to tow a car. Must be dragging up all kinds of dirt into the reel because it was a mess.

And the insides was not any better. Found a missing spring washer under the drag star that tells me the customer was in this reel...

Black permanent marker on dark green line. I plead the 5th.



Someone got inside this reel and used nasty grease on it! Thick, heavy, dark brown smelly petroleum grease like train bearing grease for heavy machinery gumming up the reel and slinging all over the inside of the cover.







I removed all of this wrong grease and put the parts in the ultra sonic parts cleaner...



1 out of 3 down. Gotta run to get the kids from school. The other two revos will get done before lunch tomorrow. Speaking of lunch the boss is making homemade beef stew tonight and feeding all of us for lunch tomorrow.
Words are the exercise for the brain. Words are life expressed... without words we die a slow meaningless death. Silence to the grave is no way to go! So live! Use words! Power of the pen is sharper than any sword! Make it so! Mom said don't surround yourself with idiots! Fly higher than the Eagles... and don't run with the turkeys! Deus Vult!

SteelHorseCowboy

Eww! Looks like earwax!


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FloridaFishinFool

#337
Quote from: SteelHorseCowboy on November 15, 2018, 04:13:45 PM
Eww! Looks like earwax!

lol! It might be! Ear wax would probably work as well as this stuff!

Gotta love the do-it-yourselfer's grabbing whatever they have at home off the shelf and putting it into the reels!

I was scraping this junk out of the reel trying to get the bulk of it out before putting the contaminated parts into the ultra sonic cleaner. The fluid in the ultra sonic cleaner is not cheap, so we try and make it last as long as we can before changing it out, and so getting as much of this type of thing out of the reel before cleaning helps to save the shop some money, but I don't get paid one penny more for doing it.

Today I had an interesting thing happen... while I was sitting at the bench working on a reel the boss came from the front counter with a reel in hand and handed it to me and said here, this is now yours!

Well thanks, I think. Like I need another reel. It looks like one of those Chinese reels, but I could not find made in China anywhere on it. But it is in really good looking shape on the outside, but the bearings are rough as hell. And the drag is locked up.

So starting tonight at home I am going to rebuild this reel.



This reel is done. If it had been a mid-line Shimano or Daiwa and up, it would have needed a bunch of parts, all bearings including the AR bearing. But since it is a $35.00 reel brand new from China... I'm not going to put one part into it. I'm just going to rehab any bad bearings just to get it running and running right out the door to somewhere else.

It has a plastic frame. Tolerances are bad. Gaps. Bent metal. Not a quality reel. But it did have something you don't find in higher quality reels- this one has an all metal clutch. Shimano and Daiwa and others now use plastic for most of it of all of it.

Breakdown dead ahead...
Words are the exercise for the brain. Words are life expressed... without words we die a slow meaningless death. Silence to the grave is no way to go! So live! Use words! Power of the pen is sharper than any sword! Make it so! Mom said don't surround yourself with idiots! Fly higher than the Eagles... and don't run with the turkeys! Deus Vult!

FloridaFishinFool

Ugh! The dreaded Shimano baitrunner. One of the most feared spinning reels to work on... This reel can be a real challenge to repair technicians.... But once over the hump and you learn its secrets, then its not so bad... I had to replace all of the bearings in this reel because of rust. The rotor bearing was noisy, and the drive gear bearings, one of them rusted to a stop and was locked up.



Well looky here... plenty of fresh water saturating the drag washers! This happens because people used pressurized water to rinse off their reels after going saltwater fishing! Shimano even says DON'T RINSE REELS!!! Wipe them off. Do not rinse because the water pressure actually pushes water and salt deeper into the reel which will cause more problems down the road and here is one of them!

You don't "lubricate" your drag washers with fresh water!   ^-^



A few minutes later after assembling the reel, just before the exterior wipe down, I noticed the line lay on the spool is mostly to the front of the spool. And so I added a thin shim washer under the spool to help even out the line lay down the road. The customer may not even notice this slight difference...

Words are the exercise for the brain. Words are life expressed... without words we die a slow meaningless death. Silence to the grave is no way to go! So live! Use words! Power of the pen is sharper than any sword! Make it so! Mom said don't surround yourself with idiots! Fly higher than the Eagles... and don't run with the turkeys! Deus Vult!

FloridaFishinFool

#339
One of our favorite customers showed up with a broken reel that took all of 5 minutes to fix. But the conversation was priceless! Talking to this tournament professional fisherman and lure manufacturer is a real hoot!

We love discussing fishing, weather, politics, lures, forum stuff... its all good! Ask this man one question and it might take an hour of discussion for the answer! But you'll get it.

We take care of him, and he takes care of us! As he was walking out going past me I asked where's our baggie? And he asked 5" or 8"? I said quantity over quality! 5". Guess I'll have to go see him for the baggie.

His brother is a retired tournament professional bass fisherman as well. He said one phone call is all it takes to set you up with a fishing trip with my brother out in Leesburg... I may take him up on that next spring.

Words are the exercise for the brain. Words are life expressed... without words we die a slow meaningless death. Silence to the grave is no way to go! So live! Use words! Power of the pen is sharper than any sword! Make it so! Mom said don't surround yourself with idiots! Fly higher than the Eagles... and don't run with the turkeys! Deus Vult!

FloridaFishinFool

Just got this one in the mail. The owner tried replacing the old worn out worm gear himself and could not get it back together. He bent the frame taking it apart. He was one screw away from success.

An old Penn 920. Ticket says just put back together- and make it work...



And 15 minutes later... a working reel...



Words are the exercise for the brain. Words are life expressed... without words we die a slow meaningless death. Silence to the grave is no way to go! So live! Use words! Power of the pen is sharper than any sword! Make it so! Mom said don't surround yourself with idiots! Fly higher than the Eagles... and don't run with the turkeys! Deus Vult!

FloridaFishinFool

This one just walked in the front door...



Got handed an old Penn 4500SS to reassemble. Found a destroyed main drive gear due to saltwater just eating the aluminum away like it was alka seltzer in water...

So I bagged this one up, put the gears on order and will get back into it once parts arrive in a week or so.







And my last reel for the day, an old Shimano Stradic 2500FH. Love this series of stradics!

Just checked the ticket and it says C&L and find out what is wrong with reel. Hope nothing serious since parts are not available any longer...



Words are the exercise for the brain. Words are life expressed... without words we die a slow meaningless death. Silence to the grave is no way to go! So live! Use words! Power of the pen is sharper than any sword! Make it so! Mom said don't surround yourself with idiots! Fly higher than the Eagles... and don't run with the turkeys! Deus Vult!

FloridaFishinFool

Words are the exercise for the brain. Words are life expressed... without words we die a slow meaningless death. Silence to the grave is no way to go! So live! Use words! Power of the pen is sharper than any sword! Make it so! Mom said don't surround yourself with idiots! Fly higher than the Eagles... and don't run with the turkeys! Deus Vult!

FloridaFishinFool

#343
Finally got in some Daiwa parts for this mag force twitchin' reel. As I recall the pawl was binding up and stripped out the inside of the plastic gear on the worm gear itself. Since it comes as an assembly, it all has to be replaced... worm gear assembly and pawl.

Old part on left, notice the steel is shiny and higher quality than the newer replacement part made of cheaper metal? And notice the distance the gear is or space seen between plastic gear and worm gear on the left? That space allowed the plastic to round out inside and no longer turn worm gear once pawl bound up.

Another thing to notice is that the new replacement part on the right appears to have a wider groove for the pawl to follow.







Just got this one next in line... a Daiwa Zillion lefty. I can not read the model number. All rubbed off. This one has clearly been used in saltwater as it shows corrosion all over, and a cracked side plate... I'll dig into this one tomorrow. Gotta pick boys up from school...



Words are the exercise for the brain. Words are life expressed... without words we die a slow meaningless death. Silence to the grave is no way to go! So live! Use words! Power of the pen is sharper than any sword! Make it so! Mom said don't surround yourself with idiots! Fly higher than the Eagles... and don't run with the turkeys! Deus Vult!

LgMouthGambler

Zillion is a 100HLA. 6.3 ratio. Gold accents are 6 gears.
My wife says she is gonna leave me if I go fishing one more time........lord how I will miss that woman.

FloridaFishinFool

Thanks! This will make finding a schematic and parts numbers easier tomorrow.
Words are the exercise for the brain. Words are life expressed... without words we die a slow meaningless death. Silence to the grave is no way to go! So live! Use words! Power of the pen is sharper than any sword! Make it so! Mom said don't surround yourself with idiots! Fly higher than the Eagles... and don't run with the turkeys! Deus Vult!

FloridaFishinFool

#346
SHC, where are you??? I've got a package for you... so let us hear from you soon!

OK, to the reels... I am a huge shimano fan, and a huge fan of the stradic line of reels- well, some of them anyway... My choice of preferred stradics are the FG, FH and FJ series and I stop right there and what I am about to show is why...

I have been servicing reels since I was a teenager some 40 years ago. Today I service reels for a Shimano/Daiwa warranty repair center and it is through working on reels every day that I learn which reels are built well and which ones have issues.

And the newer Shimano spinning reels have a drag design problem I avoid like the plague! I will not purchase any new Shimano spinning reels with this drag mechanism found inside of it because by design, it is chewing up drag washers very quickly...

Not much left to the top drag washer. Notice how it is chewed up around those 4 posts?





Here is the heart of the drag design issue we have to repair almost every day in our shop...



Shimano's new drag mech in their spinning reels is not built as strong or as durable as their older drag mechs are.

The drag washers themself are smaller and thinner with less surface area for resistance.

So that is my first issue with this new design.

My older stradics have drag washers twice the thickness and wider with more surface area to present more resistance to the spool's ability to spin on the shaft.

So if I were to compare my older stradic drag washers with this newer design's drag washers, what I find is that by weight and by volume my older drag washers are nearly twice the weight and volume of the newer drag washers.

Next, this new design may look great on paper and work great in theory, but apparently the problem is in production.

The metal plates the drag washers sit in between on my older stradics are smooth, but this newer design shows four punched holes in one drag plate.

If every plate punched out was perfectly flat and smooth, this new design might work better and last longer. But it appears to me the downfall of this design is that the plate with the holes punched in it are not perfectly flat and have ever so slightly raised edges. And the posts on one plate is also partly to blame for this problem.

And, since this new design offers less physical resistance, users tend to crank the drag down even tighter to get it where they want it, but in the real world every fish that drags that top washer around and around under this punched out drag plate is actually chewing up that top drag washer.

So what does the end user do? Yep! You guessed it. They crank it down even more! And they do this because Shimano put less in there!

So as the end user cranks the drag down ever tighter, they are squeezing the drag washers flattening them out, and as they flatten out under the increasing pressure, they tend to squeeze out sideways, and in this design, when that happens, the edges of the drag washer comes into contact with the posts and punched holes which act like a saw blade cutting off the outer edges of the drag washer until there is nothing left of it to crank down on.

You know, when I service older stradics now 20 plus years old, their drag mechs are still intact and still working after 20 years. Not so with this new design.

If I ever were to add a newer shimano spinning reel to my arsenal, I would take out this type of drag mech, and replace it with the older type that lasts forever and works for 10 even 20 years without any servicing or maintenance.

The newer stradics are guaranteed to need servicing and much more often and this is part of the reason why.

ADDED:

The above destroyed drag washer is less than 2 years old. Here is a drag mech from a 20 plus year old stradic still in almost like new condition after over 20 years of use!

You can see the raised edges of the drag washers caused by compression or cranking the drag down tight. This is why a fisherman should always back off the drag pressure of every reel after each use. Never store a reel with the drag cranked all the way down!



One lasts forever, and one fails quickly. I've made my choice! No new stradics!

Now if this is not a Shimano design problem issue. I don't know what is.

Curious as to how many of you out there are using this newer Shimano drag mech?
Words are the exercise for the brain. Words are life expressed... without words we die a slow meaningless death. Silence to the grave is no way to go! So live! Use words! Power of the pen is sharper than any sword! Make it so! Mom said don't surround yourself with idiots! Fly higher than the Eagles... and don't run with the turkeys! Deus Vult!

muzz

Great, I just ordered my 1st Shimano reel, a CI4+2500...
I've been a Penn guy forever (550,4500ss) with miminal problems (bail wire).
So I can just order the older washers and they will fit right in there?
A little weight is nothing, I'm coming from the 4500ss.

Thanks for the info.

FloridaFishinFool

Quote from: muzz on December 23, 2018, 11:49:44 AM
Great, I just ordered my 1st Shimano reel, a CI4+2500...
I've been a Penn guy forever (550,4500ss) with miminal problems (bail wire).
So I can just order the older washers and they will fit right in there?
A little weight is nothing, I'm coming from the 4500ss.

Thanks for the info.

No sir, you can not just order up the older parts and install them into a spool of a newer reel. For one, the older stradic parts are no longer made. So finding parts is if'y.

When I said it was something I would do personally, it is because I can machine whatever parts I might need to do it myself.

It might involve resizing of metal drag plates, or key washers, as they are sometimes called. And it might include making custom drag washers as well, or in an easy process, just may involve cutting larger washers down to the size I need.

It might even include some spool machining as well.

It would be great if I could just swap out an older spool with the newer spool. But you know Shimano likes to make it so parts from one reel don't just swap over into other reels. It does happen, but generally overall it doesn't happen as much as I would like it to.

Changing out a drag mech is not as simple as swapping parts on a kitchen table!  :shocking:
Words are the exercise for the brain. Words are life expressed... without words we die a slow meaningless death. Silence to the grave is no way to go! So live! Use words! Power of the pen is sharper than any sword! Make it so! Mom said don't surround yourself with idiots! Fly higher than the Eagles... and don't run with the turkeys! Deus Vult!

FloridaFishinFool

Here is a newer stradic just serviced... Notice the parts list for this "newer" reel... includes internal plastic gears, new drag washers, and one bearing. I think this person was using this reel in saltwater which might have contributed to the extent of this service job. Usually they don't require this much, but the replaced drag washers only re-inforces the issue I showed above.

Kind of funny in that I can service a 20 plus year old stradic and all I gotta do is re-lube the original drag washers and they will last another 20 years. The newer stradics? No friggin' way! I think Shimano is counting on the extra service business and parts orders... like they planned it or something!

They had something that actually worked and worked well for decades and now this. Why Shimano??? Is profit more important than quality?

Words are the exercise for the brain. Words are life expressed... without words we die a slow meaningless death. Silence to the grave is no way to go! So live! Use words! Power of the pen is sharper than any sword! Make it so! Mom said don't surround yourself with idiots! Fly higher than the Eagles... and don't run with the turkeys! Deus Vult!