new saltiga 5000 pics and look on the drag

[hafnor]

Just got a the saltiga 5000 in mail, and I wanted to share some pics and some opinions on the reel. Now at first I was sceptical about this reel after reading alan hawk's great review og the saltiga. He did find some flaws although not major but flaws that he did not find on the stella. see link here. http://www.alanhawk.com/reviews/salt10.html

first off this is the new saltiga introduced in 2010. it has a lot of new stuff to it such as a zaion air rotor, parts of carbon fibre on the spool along with a titanium lip for better casting distance, metal round knob, and the muchly anticipated magoil which is developed through NASA. see what daiwa says on the magseal oil on their website (Magnetic Oil is one of a new generation of Nano Fluids that can change density and shape when a magnetic field is applied.) what I have understood is that it removes the gasket barriers so that the reel will become much smoother when cranking the handle. and indeed it is!

I did a field test with the new saltiga compared with the equal stella 20000sw (which is known to be the smoothest offshore spinning reel out there) I know that the 200000 is a bigger reel but the gear ratio is the same so the bail will go round in the same amount since the gear ratio is the same at 4,4 to 1. I did this test many times and tried the best I could to get equal amount of power when spinning the handle. I think I did this test 20 times and the stella handle spun for about 7-8,5 times while the saltiga spun from 12-13 times. If you have both reel in your hands you will easily figure out what reel is smoothest. So saltiga is the winner here by far.

in all general the reel feels extremely smooth, in fact unbeliveably smooth! the anti reverse is instant through ar bearings (Ibelieve) but there is and assisting anti reverse dog that will kick in if ARB breaks.

included in the box is:

the box


reel pouch


papers (some kind of japanese warranty) along with an instrucion maual and schematics and a spool band with daiwa logo

on to the reel apperances





handle




now you can see a thing that kind of annoys me, a rubber cap on the outside and not on the inside. this is to prevent water intrusion into the handle and handle bearing. It annoys me because it easily can fall off and be lost, but I believe it is put there for making the reel smoother, by not installing it close to the spinning bearing.

you can also see some carbon details here. very nice I must say.




here is the rotor which has been talked about a lot. Daiwa calls it a zaion rotor and claims that it is a carbon fibre material for lighter weight and softer flew for reducing start up resistance and making the drag smooth. Alan hawk found out that it is just some kind of plastic but I do not know. What I know is that the rotor will flex  until you reach a high drag pressure where there is reinforcement archers will kick in and stop the bail from hitting the spool, this worked great when dry testing it.




the spool, let us take a look inside.





drag knob with a clicker



under the drag knob is a washer for making the tightening of the drag smooth and to prevent water intrusion



the whole drag is held inside the spool by a simple cage



remove the washer along with the clicker which is also a metal washer



carbon fibre washers, well greased with unknown grease. The grease is quite thin in consistency compared to cals



the whole drag stack is now out and contains three carbon fiber drag washers, two washer plates and one washer plate with ears.



and unshielded bearing in the bottom.



the whole thing from top to bottom



spool with spool band



All in all a very tight super smooth reel, with supersmooth strong drag




Now a thing that worried me with this reel was that alan claimed that after just a few turns of the drag knob the clicker with peel of tiny pieces of metal. he also stated that this debree would eventually fall and stick to the carbon fibre drag washers (see link of review) This fact is tested with my reel and there is no such problem. I have turned the drag knob several times and there is no debree what so ever. This is not a critisism of his review but I am just stating what my results are.

comments on the drag system:

On to the drag compared with the stella. The first thing you notice is that the clicker assembly of the drag on the saltiga is much rougher, it takes more power to go from click to click compared with the stella. So when just mouting the spool with very very low drag (under one pound) the stella is far smoother as you can barely feel the clicks. Now nobody uses that low drag so I turned up the heat and sat the drag to 7 and ten pounds of drag on both reels you wont feel that rough clicking on the saltiga or the stella for that matter. The startup resistance is close to nothing and I can not feel any difference between them.

There is still one major concern about this reel. as Alan Hawk removed the rotor and the clutch assembly there was some mag fluid going out of the seal. This is not good, and I have not opened the reel up to take a look for my self, but this have to be checked after extensive testing. My hopes are that the fluid spilling out was just some excess that was pushed out through high pressure and that it will reach a point where it will level out. A thing to bear in mind is that daiwa specificaly says that you should not disassemble the rotor and the reel because of the mag seals and fluids. There may be a point in that... But this is just speculations

[hafnor]

this can be moved to the spinning reel section

[redsetta]

Great post Hafnor.

[trishul]

i like the looks of the new saltiga but i still prefer the old saltigas especially the exp and the s extremes the reason is that if i want to service the new saltiga i gotta send it to daiwa and waste unecessary $$ since they dont sell the magnetic oil, for now im just waiting till that magnetic oil is readily available then only will i get the new saltiga but it is one of the most eye catching reels out there and im sure it can hold its own

[alantani]

is there a carbon fiber drag washer underneath the spool?

[trishul]

no not on the new or old saltiga