Gear Mesh when reeling

[JCBIII]

I have a lews tournament pro xp.  First fishing trip and it got submerged for a couple minutes when my so flipped her canoe.    I took the reel completely apart.  Every single part was layed out on a board and cleaned, soaked, lightly oiled or greased and I am 100% sure that the reel was put back together correctly exactly according to the schematic.

 

Problem is when i reel, I get a very distinct feel of gear mesh. Not much noise, but definitely something you feel and cannot mistake.  Ive taken it apart a few times to check the bearings and even gone as far as packing the case to the brim with yamaha marine grease, the mesh feeling is still there.   There isn't enough hours on this real for me to think there is an issues with the gears, and the reel was absolutely one of the smoothest in my collection when i bought it. 

 

 

Any suggestions? I'm about to just ship it back to lews.

[garroyo130]

The feeling youre describing is what my reels felt like when the pinion bearing needed grease. I switched from oiling that bearing to packing it with grease and its been better. I also moved on from Yamalube because despite people saying its very thick, I didn't find that to be the case. I now use Cals tan on gears and on drag. 

[PhishLI]

6 hours ago, JCBIII said:

Problem is when i reel, I get a very distinct feel of gear mesh. Not much noise, but definitely something you feel and cannot mistake.

With a little time cranking a reel, the pinion and main run-in together. It's a wise move to put match-marks on both before you remove them for servicing. If a reel is smooth before servicing it, but not afterwards, at least you can eliminate the gearset as the issue because they were returned to their original tooth-to-tooth position.

[garroyo130]

13 minutes ago, PhishLI said:

With a little time cranking a reel, the pinion and main run-in together. It's a wise move to put match-marks on both before you remove them for servicing. If a reel is smooth before servicing it, but not afterwards, at least you can eliminate the gearset as the issue because they were returned to their original tooth-to-tooth position.

 

I don't think indexing applies to baitcasting like it does to spinning ... I may be wrong though 

[Kirtley Howe]

I had a friend, unfortunately now deceased, who swore by a technique he used to "break in" new casting reels. He would bring them home, and before ever using them, he would take them apart and clean them. He would then re-lube them and put them back together. He would then take the handle off, and attach his electric drill to the shaft for the handle, and then run the drill for a while on slow speed, and gradually ramp up the speed to as fast as his drill would run. Then he would take the reel back apart, clean it again, and re-lube and reassemble the reel. He claimed that doing this "broke the reel in", and made it much smoother to use. I have never tried it, nor do I recommend it, but it seemed to work for him.  Any thoughts on this?

[garroyo130]

15 minutes ago, Kirtley Howe said:

I had a friend, unfortunately now deceased, who swore by a technique he used to "break in" new casting reels. He would bring them home, and before ever using them, he would take them apart and clean them. He would then re-lube them and put them back together. He would then take the handle off, and attach his electric drill to the shaft for the handle, and then run the drill for a while on slow speed, and gradually ramp up the speed to as fast as his drill would run. Then he would take the reel back apart, clean it again, and re-lube and reassemble the reel. He claimed that doing this "broke the reel in", and made it much smoother to use. I have never tried it, nor do I recommend it, but it seemed to work for him.  Any thoughts on this?

 

I read this somewhere or other when I first started fishing and tried it. The book recommended toothpaste so that's what I used. I can confirm the reel was much smoother, although I'm not sure the premature wear is worth it. 

[Tom Orr]

11 minutes ago, garroyo130 said:

 

I read this somewhere or other when I first started fishing and tried it. The book recommended toothpaste so that's what I used. I can confirm the reel was much smoother, although I'm not sure the premature wear is worth it. 

I remember the toothpaste thing from late 70's or early 80's. Only tried it once with a Bantam 100, and it's been so long ago I don't remember the result. Sounded like it would work in theory with the little grit in the toothpaste.

 

[FishTank]

Try cleaning the AR bearing (1 way clutch) and oiling. Do no use grease.  If it is submerged and just a small piece of debris gets in there, it will give you that geary feeling.  

[JediAmoeba]

57 minutes ago, garroyo130 said:

 

I read this somewhere or other when I first started fishing and tried it. The book recommended toothpaste so that's what I used. I can confirm the reel was much smoother, although I'm not sure the premature wear is worth it. 

This does work to smooth the gears up when there is no load applied. But when you put a load on the rod, the reel and the spool there is a small flex and the gears are no longer meshed perfectly. So I say let them naturally break in and keep the reel clean and lubed...

[WRB]

Back in the day we lapped gears using Colgate White tooth paste using a drill motor on low to turn the gear shaft.

Todays reels have precision machined gears at very close tolerances, no reason to polish them.

Do not over pack reel gears with grease and use light gear grease sparingly. Light reel oil bearings and or bushings.

Tom

[Delaware Valley Tackle]

1 hour ago, Kirtley Howe said:

I had a friend, unfortunately now deceased, who swore by a technique he used to "break in" new casting reels. He would bring them home, and before ever using them, he would take them apart and clean them. He would then re-lube them and put them back together. He would then take the handle off, and attach his electric drill to the shaft for the handle, and then run the drill for a while on slow speed, and gradually ramp up the speed to as fast as his drill would run. Then he would take the reel back apart, clean it again, and re-lube and reassemble the reel. He claimed that doing this "broke the reel in", and made it much smoother to use. I have never tried it, nor do I recommend it, but it seemed to work for him.  Any thoughts on this?

Bad idea

[Delaware Valley Tackle]

Excessive amount or “thick” grease do not make gears smooth. I don’t believe the interface of reel gears is precise enough to require indexing. I’ve seen no evidence or second hand proof of “wearing in”. It’s common though for reels to have a little more feel and/or sound after being freed up by cleaning. It’s not a sign of anything wrong. You can fine tune to get a preferred feel thoroughly cleaning and repacking frame bearings may help. It varies by reels. 

[PhishLI]

4 hours ago, Delaware Valley Tackle said:

I don’t believe the interface of reel gears is precise enough to require indexing

Several weeks ago, I pulled only my Zillion G gears for a clean and relube. Before I removed them, I cleaned the gear faces with MAF cleaner on a Qtip and marked each with Dykem Red. I came to find that my engraver was kaput, and somewhere along the way I lost the paint mark on the pinion's tooth. Put it back together and, well chit fire, it's geary. 7 take aparts and advancing the pinion later and it's ethereally smooth again. I agree that with standard feeling reels this may not be noticeable, but it is with this particular reel.

[MAN]

21 hours ago, Kirtley Howe said:

I had a friend, unfortunately now deceased, who swore by a technique he used to "break in" new casting reels. He would bring them home, and before ever using them, he would take them apart and clean them. He would then re-lube them and put them back together. He would then take the handle off, and attach his electric drill to the shaft for the handle, and then run the drill for a while on slow speed, and gradually ramp up the speed to as fast as his drill would run. Then he would take the reel back apart, clean it again, and re-lube and reassemble the reel. He claimed that doing this "broke the reel in", and made it much smoother to use. I have never tried it, nor do I recommend it, but it seemed to work for him.  Any thoughts on this?

 

What exactly was he "breaking in" within the reel? 

[Kirtley Howe]

4 hours ago, MAN said:

 

What exactly was he "breaking in" within the reel? 

According to him this removed any rough spots, burrs, etc, and helped the gears mesh together better. Maybe, but it always seemed to me that he was just causing premature wear. But, his reels, his choice.

[MAN]

11 hours ago, Kirtley Howe said:

According to him this removed any rough spots, burrs, etc, and helped the gears mesh together better. Maybe, but it always seemed to me that he was just causing premature wear. But, his reels, his choice.

I would agree unless these were old reels with casted gears.  Otherwise he put a lot of miles on the reel right out of the box, but since there was no stress from retrieving anything it probably didn't hurt anything as well. Good way to kill some time and learn the inners of the reel though!   

[Fishingmickey]

On 5/7/2023 at 7:53 PM, Kirtley Howe said:

I had a friend, unfortunately now deceased, who swore by a technique he used to "break in" new casting reels. He would bring them home, and before ever using them, he would take them apart and clean them. He would then re-lube them and put them back together. He would then take the handle off, and attach his electric drill to the shaft for the handle, and then run the drill for a while on slow speed, and gradually ramp up the speed to as fast as his drill would run. Then he would take the reel back apart, clean it again, and re-lube and reassemble the reel. He claimed that doing this "broke the reel in", and made it much smoother to use. I have never tried it, nor do I recommend it, but it seemed to work for him.  Any thoughts on this?

I have heard/read of something similar to this being done except they used toothpaste on the gears and ran it with a drill to polish the gears. Then disassembled, cleaned it, reassembled and lightly greased.

FM

[J Francho]

9 out of 10 dentists recommend it!  I'm one that wouldn't recommend toothpaste on your gears.  I'm thinking you either have too much or too little crease on the main/pinion gears.  Worst case, you can send it to DVT for a service and checkup.

[txchaser]

On 5/8/2023 at 2:15 AM, PhishLI said:

Several weeks ago, I pulled only my Zillion G gears for a clean and relube. Before I removed them, I cleaned the gear faces with MAF cleaner on a Qtip and marked each with Dykem Red. I came to find that my engraver was kaput, and somewhere along the way I lost the paint mark on the pinion's tooth. Put it back together and, well chit fire, it's geary. 7 take aparts and advancing the pinion later and it's ethereally smooth again. I agree that with standard feeling reels this may not be noticeable, but it is with this particular reel.

This is really good to know! I had this with a tat elite too, smooth before disassembly, noticably geary afterwards. Never did figure out why. 

 

Were you going one tooth at a time to find the spot and got lucky? Seems like it could be 50 or more tests? Could you tell one way or the other before you put it back together? 

 

[PhishLI]

4 minutes ago, txchaser said:

Were you going one tooth at a time to find the spot and got lucky?

Yes. I think the pinion has 11 or 12 teeth. Once I reestablished the marks, I just kept advancing one tooth at a time. Kinda sucked breaking it down several times. Serves me right for losing the mark to begin with.

[newapti5]

39 minutes ago, PhishLI said:

Yes. I think the pinion has 11 or 12 teeth. Once I reestablished the marks, I just kept advancing one tooth at a time. Kinda sucked breaking it down several times. Serves me right for losing the mark to begin with.

 

I may have some trouble understanding this method. Let's assume the pinion gear has 12 teeth. If the number of teeth on the main gear can be divided evenly by 12, say 72 teeth for a perfectly 6.0:1 gear ratio reel, that means each pinion gear tooth will only touch/mesh with 6 certain teeth on the main gear, FOREVER. In this case, yes, indexing the main gear and pinion gear would be helpful to maintain the smoothness. 

 

But in any other cases than that, each pinion gear tooth would have chance to mesh with EVERY tooth on the main gear. It just seems pointless to index the gears in these cases, especially since almost all the reels on the market now have an un-even number of gear ratio, like 6.3:1 or 7.4:1. 

[Tatulatard]

We don't make a perfect circle with our wrist rotation when turning the handle and apply power unevenly through the rotation.  I wonder if certain pinion teeth wear to certain main gear teeth and once this is upset from a disassembly that it can produce a geary sensation.  Definitely going to be marking me gears before removal from now on.

[JCBIII]

Sorry for the lengthy time to reply, and thanks for all the replies. 

 

Extra info.. I took the real appart peice by peice turning the shafts until i did/didnot feel the grinding/meshing, whatever it is. and it feels like it is in the gears that make the line track left and right to deposit it evenly onto the spool. Sorry I dont know what that part is called. Anyway, there is a definite "bite" when turning those gears by hand, and it feels like the same spot in the plastic gear mesh, but Im thinking it could also just be in the bearings.

 

Does anyone know where I can just by a top end bearing kit and I'll just replace every bearing in the thing and see what happens? I wanted to use Ceramic bearing anyway.

[J Francho]

A top end bearing replacement won't fix a binding worm gear. There is something else not quite right. That should operate smoothly when turned by hand. 

[JediAmoeba]

Hear me out - I have had this problem with a couple buddies Daiwa reels. The problem was the nylon gears that drive the worm gear. These gears are very soft and subject to warping and getting out if shape if any piece gets in there. Try keeping one of those gears off and seeing if it still feels gears. Typically these gears are very cheap and easily replaced.