New Reel Pre Service, Service...

[FMI]

I was discussing reel maintenance with a customer today and ended up taking a Battle apart to give him a quick run down of my personal pre-service maintenance. The first three pictures are of the reel as it was stripped. The other before and all of my after pictures other than photo number four were out of focus. I'll see about doing it again with better lighting if there is interest.

One of the biggest problems I've seen with spinning reels that survive a few years of salt water fishing is stuck screws. If you service the reel once or more a season this shouldn't be a problem, if you have OCD like myself you will remove every screw from the reel and coat it with grease using a brush. I was happy to see that most of the exterior screws on the Battle were greased. Not as much as I would like but an improvement over previous Penn reels.

To help protect the gear and bearings I heavily coat around the seam after removing the side plate forming a gasket of grease. It makes a huge difference in salt intrusion in the event of an accidental dunk in the drink. Most of the internals on this reel were well greased even on non contact surfaces, anything that wasn't is now. Make sure to grease the dog well as most reels come from the factory (this once included) grease-less to sparsely greased. While you are doing the dog you might as well do the whole underside of the spool. Yes it is anodized but your already down there and it's 2 cents worth of grease.

The process for the bail arm, roller, etc is pretty much the same. With a spinning reel it's just short of impossible to over grease (drag excluded, I'll cover the drag system in a separate post).

https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/- ... directlink

https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/P ... directlink

https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/o ... directlink

https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/w ... directlink

If anyone is interested in getting maximum free spool and casting distance out of a bait caster let me know and I'll do post on that when I do my buddies reels. Advance warning though, doing so involves removing the factory grease and using oil for lubrication. There are two or three oils on the market that work well for this application. However if you use them a lot you will need to do the service two-three times throughout the year to keep it in top form.

Sorry about the rushed post, I'll clean it up and fix the pictures a bit later this evening when I have more time.

[jadams92002]

Taking my reels apart isn’t the problem, putting them back to gather is. lol

[FMI]

Taking my reels apart isn’t the problem, putting them back to gather is. lol

What reels are you running? If it's not something to odd I'll do a detail strip and assembly (with pictures for you Georgia boys )