Bearings and other parts upgrades

[NavyVet1204]

Real newbie question, but when do you know it’s time to upgrade parts particularly bearings?

 

A couple fellow fishermen I know advise me to go ahead and put such and such bearings in a reel if I want maximum performance. Well, their “upgraded bearings” don’t feel any different than my standard factory bearings...I suppose it’s more about longevity than feel?

 

My baitcasters are mid grade tier and aren’t even a couple months old each so I feel it’s not worth the money at the moment.

[Delaware Valley Tackle]

Compared to properly flushed and lubed stockers new bearings provide little improvement. When a clean bearing is spun and runs loudly and comes to a sudden stop opposed to slowing gradually it’s time for them to go. 

[NOC 1]

8 hours ago, NavyVet1204 said:

Real newbie question, but when do you know it’s time to upgrade parts particularly bearings?

 

A couple fellow fishermen I know advise me to go ahead and put such and such bearings in a reel if I want maximum performance. Well, their “upgraded bearings” don’t feel any different than my standard factory bearings...I suppose it’s more about longevity than feel?

 

My baitcasters are mid grade tier and aren’t even a couple months old each so I feel it’s not worth the money at the moment.

Your bearings may not even be broken in yet. All of the major players use pretty good bearings at the factory including ABU and Lews.

 

Now, I buy a lot of used top tier reels and no matter what the age or condition, I take them apart, clean them and then put a brand new set of ZPI Ceramics in them. I also customize them when I put them together adding bearings and etc. in some cases.

 

I think that there IS a small performance gain to using the upgraded ceramic bearings, but it might not amount to much of a real performance gain in the real world .

 

Whatever the difference is, it is more evident with very light spools because the mass of the ceramic bearing is lighter and so takes less energy to start them moving. Also the friction coefficients of ceramic bearings are lower than SS bearings.

 

But I think that as the spool weight to bearing weight ratio increases the effects become almost insignificant. Also using oil on the ceramics tends to even up the weight difference as the oil makes the bearing harder to get started but it matters less as the mass of the spool increases.

 

I have a few reels that I bought new including a Revo SX which I am not customizing or upgrading, so I just sent that one into the shop and had a pro clean it and do some polishing. The bearings are good bearings and the spool is relatively heavy so I left them in.

 

I would think that the best thing you could do with your SX is to send it out to the shop when the year is done for you and have them do a clean and tune. Probably see a pretty big difference when it comes back. Way more than new bearings. You might want to try lubricating with TSI 321 while you are at it. Oil can really slow bearings down.

[Jig Man]

I did the upgrade and could not tell much difference.  I got more by super tuning my reels.

[NavyVet1204]

Ok I appreciate the information guys. 

[johnD.]

I buy bearings from Hawgtech.

 

https://www.hawgtech.com/spool-bearings

[OnthePotomac]

Listen to DVT.  Cleaned, properly lubed bearings with a quality bearing oil will keep bearing going for a very long time.  I have reels 10 years old with original spool bearings still doing just fine.

[mrpao]

I use to upgrade my bearings. Didn't see a whole lot of difference.

Now I just clean and relube the factory bearings with quality oil. 

I only replace the bearings now if they go bad.

[garroyo130]

I may be alone here but handle bearings are a nice upgrade from bushings IMO. 

 

Outside of that, and levelwind bearings (which didnt make a lick of difference) the only thing ive changed on my reels is I swapped the dial on my fuego ct with a tatula ct colorful dial so that i can actually see it in low light. 

[Bankc]

I replaced the spool bushings with Hawgtech bearings in my old Shimano B-100 Mag.  It didn't make a noticeable difference versus when I cleaned and properly lubed the reel.  Now, with bearings you don't have to be exacting with the oil, as when bushing start to run a bit dry, their performance suffers greatly, whereas bearings can go a good bit longer and still perform pretty well.  The only reason I replaced them is that the bushings were plastic and old and getting rather worn out from use.  The bushings were almost 30 years old!  But even then, they worked fine with the proper amount and weight of oil.  They just needed to be cleaned and oiled rather frequently. 

 

Think of it this way, a poorly operating bushing or bearing is basically doing the same job as some of the tension created by the spool tension knob or cast control.  So any performance you gain, you're gonna want to immediately take away so you don't instantly backlash on every cast.  You're going to be able to make up for most poor bearings or bushings by simply backing off the spool tension knob.  Either way, you're still working with the same friction coefficient.  However, there's a point to where if they're bad enough, even backing fully off the spool tension knob won't be enough.  At that point, an upgrade will serve you some good.  

 

So my advice is to upgrade bearings when something is wrong with your old ones.  Otherwise, just keep up with the cleaning and lubrication, and you'll be fine.  There's no point in upgrading to "something better" if you can't really take advantage of what is supposed to make it better.