Boca Bearings

[SirSnookalot]

I was having a bit of trouble with one of my spinning reels, take in to my local reel tech and he said I needed a bearing, maybe 2.  This local shop does not stock every bearing, I could have ordered from the manufacture but I want to put the reel back in service right away.  Boca Bearings is only a few miles away so I stopped in for the first time, this is one class A operation.  They measure the bearings at the parts counter, mentioning it was for a reel their fishing guru 

"Larry" comes out to assist.  He gave me 2 choices, stainless or ceramic bearings, I've never had a problem with this  particular located stainless bearing on any my saltwater reels, but I bit for the ceramic one packed in grease, his claim was smoother operation, who doesn't want a smoother reel.  They were not cheap, $10 for stainless and $12 for the ceramic, I could have paid $4.00 from the mfg, but I have to wait, I didn't care about the money.  I'll see at 7:00 am this morning whether it was worth it or not.

On a side note we were discussing line roller bearings, one nameless company in particular where that bearing was constantly failing, his claim was the braided line was doing the damage.  I have had that bearing fail on that reel and Larry did say it was common.  That would never deter me from buying another one as it's an excellent reel, I have 2.

[Felix77]

Boca customer service rocks. I replaced bearings on an older baitcaster that was given to me. They helped me through the entire process.

[Delaware Valley Tackle]

I'm a Boca Bearing dealer and readily admit that there are cheaper products out there choose to be affiliated with top service and guaranteed quality. Larry is a good guy. I disagree on the point of braid causing roller bearing problems though.

[Capt.Bob]

x2 on the line roller bearing, this is the most used and abused bearing on the spinning reels. I would venture to say the reason it has such a high failure rate, is very few ever service it, and the amount of pressure put on it with it's "necessarily" small size. This tiny bearing by itself takes the approximate same pressure the much larger spool bearings do on retrieval, and at a much higher rpm when bringing in line, I have no idea how you would compare the pressure when retrieving a large fish but I can be safe in saying a great deal more than the spool bearings on the baitcast reels most are are familiar with, regardless of the type of line being used.