I was sorry to hear about the trouble you just had, Bryan, when you told me about the theft of my drag kit off the postal truck, but I didn't know how many shipments were stolen until I read your post in ">For Sale>Ultimate Upgrades..." That just made it so much more awful. Jeez, I dislike thieves.
The thing is, I've been wanting to update this thread with some lessons learned while upgrading quite a few drags using your Ultimate Upgrades. The timing might not be great, as I'm sure you are distracted, but here goes anyway.
First, here's a list of reels I've already upgraded, or are in the process of upgrading:
Penn 146, to 5-stack
Penn 145, to 5-stack
Penn 501, to 5-stack
Penn 99, to 5-stack
Penn 113H, to 7-stack
Penn 114H, to 7-stack
Daiwa 400H, to 5-stack
Newell C220, to 5-stack
Newell S229-5, to 5-stack
Newell S332-5, to 5-stack (soon)
Newell S338-5, to 5-stack
Newell S533-4.6, to 5-stack (soon)
Now, these reels were not all upgraded at once, and all of them have other upgrades as well. I've fished six of them so far post-upgrade, and plan to fish all of them eventually. They all worked extremely well, except the Penn 501. Which is how I learned (or more accurately, relearned) something to watch out for when doing these drag upgrades.
Around Thanksgiving, I was shallow water rockfishing at San Nicolas Island with 8-10 oz of lead using the 501 on a 30# rig and the 99 on a 40# rig. What happened was, while setting drag, it was significantly harder to get 9 lb of drag from the Penn 501 than it was to get 12# of drag from the Penn 99.
During my Christmas vacation, I've been doing more upgrades, particularly several of the Newells. But, before starting, I wanted to get to the bottom of the problem with the Penn 501. What I found eventually, was pretty simple but easy to miss. The steel gear I put in the 501 did not have the grooves (for the eared washers) cut all the way down to the flat in the bottom of the gear-cup, where the first CF washer sits. The grooves were cut just far enough down for a standard CF-keyed washer-CF combo to raise the first eared washer up into the groove, allowing the eared washer to compress the stack below it, without bottoming in the groove. However, when the standard CF-keyed washer-CF combo was replaced with the thinner parts from the Ultimate Upgrades kit, the eared washer would bottom in the grooves before compressing the CF-keyed washer-CF combo underneath it. I was able to resolve the problem by adding some thickness to the CF-keyed washer-CF stack that goes into the gear first.
I don't recall now exactly how the problem was resolved in every reel since I figured out the Penn 501, but some ways to increase the thickness included changing the initial, thin-thin-thin, stack as follows:
1) std CF-thin keyed washer-thin CF
2) std CF-thin CF-thin keyed washer-thin CF
3) std CF washer-std keyed washer-thin CF
4) std CF-std keyed washer-std CF
It took some trial and error, because the steel gears, even the SS gears in the Newells, did not have the grooves all cut to the same depth, not even to the same depth on both sides of the same gear. Basically, I would put in Stacks 1), 2), 3), or 4) and use a small punch to check the height of the stack vs the height of the groove-bottom. If the height of the Stack was above the height of the groove-bottom, then the eared washer would be free to compress the stack. When I got the stack just right, as it seemed to be on the Newell C220 and S229, it was amazing how quickly and effortlessly I could get the drag up to 10-15 lbs.
Of course, another option would have been to Dremel the groove-bottom deeper in the gear, but having done that about a year ago with the gear in the Penn 113H, I did not want to go that route again. The steel gears are
tough, it was very hard to do, it took a long time, and a few times it seemed I might ruin the gear, ruin my Dremel, or injure myself. [And so yes, I did encounter this problem at least a year earlier, but somehow it failed to register with me a year later when upgrading the Penn 501.]
OK, a few lessons learned here:
1) The drag upgrade kits are
great, however, every reel is a little different. The good news is that there is room to play around a bit with the drag stack if need be.
2) If the drag upgrade does not make it extremely easy to get the drag up to 10-15 lbs, then something is not right in the drag stack, and take a close look at the depth of the grooves in the gear-cup.
3) If the grooves in the gear (for the eared washers) are not cut all the way down to the bottom of the gear-cup, check to make sure the first CF-eared washer-CF, or whatever you replace it with, clears the height of the groove-bottom.
That's it. I'm sure it could be said in fewer words, but I'm not known for fewer words.
