|
Written by Administrator
|
|
Wednesday, 16 April 2008 |
|
The first article of this series talked about the “Do’s” of fishing reel care, now we will discuss some do not’s. There are many things that will cause your baitcasting reels to fail, we will talk about them and what you can do to avoid costly repair bills.
Lack of or improper cleaning many be the biggest culprit when it comes to worn and damaged reels. Everyone talks about the Shimano Curado 200B (Green) as being a bullet proof reel; while it can take being extremely mistreated it too can fail if not properly taken care of. Your fishing reels are an important part of your fishing ability and regular maintenance is a sure way to make sure that you don't go without.
Ever been fishing with that guy who’s reel is making noise every time he casts it? “Oh it just has some dirt in it”, then he dunks it in the lake a couple times and says “that should do it”. And yep the noise is gone for a little while and then it comes back. This is probably the worst thing (other than never servicing your reels) that you can do to your equipment. When you completely submerge your reel in water, the fiber drag washers soak it up, the gears lubricants are washed away, and the oil is being flushed out of your reels bearings. Eventually this reel will lock up from lack of lubrication and corrosion. The drag washers are compressed between the drive gear and the drag plate, when the washers get saturated with water and then add compression, you have a very quick reaction called oxidization and it will cause your drag system to completely lock up and you may loose the fish of a life time. Let’s recap, flushes oil out of bearings which will lead to them seizing, washes grease off the gears causing teeth to break and stripping, drag washers soak up the water and cause oxidization and the drag system locks up; sounds like bad mojo to me! Don’t dunk and fish!
WD40, the fix all, right? Wrong, WD40 is a cleaner with penetration qualities and quickly dissolves grease and oils. If you have your reel disassembled and want something to clean it with this would work great, however I recommend Simple Green. WD40, since it is an aerosol, could help while on the water to clean dirt and debris out of a reel or bearing, to keep you going for the day, however make sure to have it serviced ASAP after a situation like this. By spraying your reel with WD40 you have dissolved everything in it that was protecting it.
Oversized Handles have become a trend in “Amping up” your fishing equipment. By placing an oversized handle on your reel the goal is to increase the gear ratio and make it retrieve faster. While this is true and it does work, you are also changing the stress management factor of the gears inside the reel. Most reels will be able to support this added stress, however eventually the gear system is going to fail. Either by a fractured tooth or a crack in the gear it’s self. It’s going to take a load to cause this to happen and guess when that load will be, when you are trying to retrieve the fish of a life time. The manufacturers of today’s reels have put a lot of technology and field testing time in and they have squeezed every ounce of performance out of today’s reels. If you want to achieve a faster gear ratio, look into changing the drive gear and pinion gear or look at a different reel. Changing the handle is a risky proposition in today’s bass fishing tools.
|
