Split grip EVA foam replacement?

[Joseph Daines]

So i have a Split grip rod that is EVA foam, And it has worn down so much there is no more grip, So i looked into getting Rod grips to go over the EVA Foam, And i did find some on tackle warehouse, But they do not work for split grip rods, So my father told me to use spray-on truck bedliner, I was like No way, So i thought about replacing the grips, But i can't take them off my rod, Does anyone have any suggestions on what to do instead of buying a new rod?

[Delaware Valley Tackle]

You can carefully pinch off the Eva in chunks with pliers and scrape away the residue with gentle heat and the edge of a popsicle stick. New grips have to be slid on from the back end using epoxy or rubber cement as adhesive

[Joseph Daines]

41 minutes ago, Delaware Valley Tackle said:

You can carefully pinch off the Eva in chunks with pliers and scrape away the residue with gentle heat and the edge of a popsicle stick. New grips have to be slid on from the back end using epoxy or rubber cement as adhesive

Yes i you can do that, But i have found no grips that will fit my rod.

[fishnkamp]

Joseph where do you live, just your town and state.  Someone like DVT or my friend Tom can do the repair.  Take a look at the following website. It belongs to my friend Tom. He has redone a ton of rods for friends of mine. For me he took a brand new G Loomis rod and removed the full cork handle, and the reel seat because the new rod used a cheap plastic reel seat, hood and locking ring setup. My spinning reel kept loosening up, and this was on a $250 brand new rod.  We chose to use a super comfortable American Tackle reel seat and a pair of Winn Grips, so now it is a split grip.My reel stays tight, thee rod is lighter and feels  terrific in my hand and best of all the Winn Grips are like golf club grips, they have a bit of tackyness that I really lke. You could choose these or get better quality eva put back on. If you are anywhere in the MD.VA. DE. PA. even NJ I can hook you up with him. If not I would be happy to help you find someone near you that does that kind of work.   Here is his website and then I will post a couple of pictures of the rod I was speaking of. Also I will post a link to a youtube of Russ Lane changing out his grips to Winns.

http://www.tomscustomrods.com/custom-rods-galley, http://www.tomscustomrods.com/winn-grips/  Take a look at all of his galleries I think you will get the idea what a custom rod builder can do. I have a friend Kris that a has fished a favorite rod for 25 plus years. Tom stripped all of the guides, seat grips and even the original paint  off the rod blank. He totally redid it because Kris loved it but it had all kinds of chips along it from years of use. When Tom got done with t it looked like it was band new.

Here are the pics of mine after Tom's fix. The first is obviously the way G Loomis now sells it with all plastic garbage. It used to be all metal hood and lock rings. The problem is G Loomis was bought out by Shimano and everything got made cheaper. I had to get this rod as it was a warranty replacement.

 

[Preytorien]

That looks sharp. Love the handle design

[rippin-lips]

Find a local rod builder to you and have them install a new grip. If there's one close enough to drive to within an hour or so that would save you money on shipping. I need some changes made to a rod and the labor cost is like $30-50 which is great but I'm going to have another $40-60 in shipping it both ways. So now I'm looking at roughly $100 total and that kinda makes it tough for me to decide on what to do now. That's me shipping it in the same state or 1 state away. 

[fishnkamp]

Rippin lips the guy you want to use is Toms custom rods in Bel Air MG  He is top notch and does work for lots of us im MG, VA. DE, etc.  He is the guy that did my rod.  Check out his website at http://www.tomscustomrods.com/custom-rods-galley.

You will definitely like him and he can show you a ton of options that you could choose to put together. He stocks a ton of  goodies, but he will let you pick and choose depending on what you want. He has already redone 3 rods for me. One had too long a split handle, which he removed the rear cork, managed to save it, cut the handle down almost 4 inches and reinstalled the rear cork. The second and third were G Loomis spinning rods we removed the full cork handle, seat and foregrip. We replaced them with the combination you see above.  TRom is located off I 95 between Bel Air and Aberdeen.

Back in the 80's we had a store on RT 40, near Golden Ring Mall, called The Fishin Shop. Tom repaired rods there.  He has been doing it a long time.

Preytorien that handle is a set of Winn Grips. Winn makes the grips for golf clubs. The ones made for fishing rods are made in the "natural" color with their logo in it ( the one you see in the picture) and a bunch of other colors. I chose the natural because it gave me a cork like appearance that I wanted since this was a G Loomis rod after all.

[rippin-lips]

I already spoke with him after seeing his name previously mentioned by you since he's in MD. He seems to do some very nice work. However, the photo he sent me to reference what he would do to my rod was not at all pleasing to the eyes. This is what he proposed but on a different area of the rod. Imo that does not look good. I can't take that chance on this rod. I told him it wasn't what I was thinking and asked how else he could do what I wanted done but I never received a response back from him.

[Hogsticker]

Any grip will work. You just have to ream it out. The Winn grips are pretty easy to work with. As DVT said, pluck the remaining Eva off with pliers, remove as much epoxy you can without damaging the blank, ream your new grip so it will slide up the blank snug, use your glue / epoxy of choice and slide her on. Any rod building online store will have whatever grips you desire. 

[.ghoti.]

Winn grips are nice, but are NOT easy to work with.

[Hogsticker]

2 hours ago, .ghoti. said:

Winn grips are nice, but are NOT easy to work with.

That's strange. I regripped 3 old Kistlers with full grip Winns. Pretty easy. That being said, I didn't like them one bit. 

[Delaware Valley Tackle]

The skin on the Winn can be twisted off or out of alignment if you get as aggressive on them as you can regular EVA. If you get epoxy on them by accident the little ridges can be hard to clean.  Not the end of the world just not the norm of other materials. 

[fishnkamp]

I believe that was a repair of a broken rod actually. Take a few minutes to look thru all of hid galleries and see what you like. Here is another rod he did for a guy I met.

 

 

That is EVA with some nice extras. If you see anything in any of his galleries you like I would  talk to him about that. 

[Joseph Daines]

Thanks everyone for the great answers! I think i will be ordering some Win grips and putting them on myself, Thank you all again!