Took Apart My First Reel And Flushed The Bearings

[lmbfisherman]

So I finally decided to take a dive further into taking apart a reel.   I mean I did normal cleaning and simple maintenance before, but I want to be able to service my own reels.  It can get expensive sending 21 reels in. So I decided to test it out on a cheapie reel I bought from BPS.  (I'm not a very good handyman normally and I tend to muck it up!)  Funny part is I went to school learning how to build circuit boards and most of my career I was able to do the work on computer parts....I don't get it!  You'd think the precision required would help me with the bigger things! NOT!  I did do some minor damage to the paint job because there was a 4th screw too take the reel side, side plate off.  It was in an awkward positions.  Of course I noticed later there was another screw to remove the top part of the worm gear and it made it easier to reach that screw, first lesson learned. 

 

Anyway I'm amazed on how good this reel works now.  I cleaned out the excess grease, flushed the bearings and cleaned the gears/greased.  Before cleaning this thing it couldn't free spool more than 1 second and now it can go for a good 10 seconds.  I didn't get a chance to actually use it on a rod yet after the cleaning but before I had a hard time chucking any baits because I had to cast hard and 1 out of 3 times would backlash.  I'm thinking this thing could actually be usable now, I'm going to have to test it out tomorrow.  I've started on my Citica 200G7 now and have taken it apart and the bearings are sitting in acetone as we speak.  For those of you who are sitting on the fence, for goodness sakes if I can do it, Mr.  Two Left Hands   you definitely can and well worth the trouble!

[roadwarrior]

Congratulations!

 

 

 

[FloridaFishinFool]

Its a great feeling bringing reels back to life again. Nothing like that first time feeling!