Delrin bushings to replace bearings in high corrosion areas.

[Pro Reel]

hey guys, recently on another forum, they were discussing the pinion bearings that shimano uses in most small baitcasting reels. The bearing is open to the back of the spool area and gets wet easy, therefore it corrodes easy. Dan Thornburn, a Shimano rep that answers questions on several forums sugested that if someone could come up with a bushing made of delrin to replace that bearing, then he thought there would be a high demand for that. Dekrin is a type of plastic or nylon thats extremly hard and durable. It's properties are similar to steel but because it's a plastic, it has self lubricating qualities. I have a friend that works at a small plastics fab shop and I ran the question by him. he says that they could easily cut bushings from any size of delrin tubing and or mill them if they don't have tubing in the exact size needed. The shimano pinion bearing is a 8x12x3.5 size. he is going to run me same prototypes to test for fit in that size and also probably some crankshaft bearing sizes also, as some of those are also prone to corrosion from the spool side openings. When he finds the right exact size he can then get me a price on vollum orders.
My question to you folks here is do you have a need for those bushings and is there other sizes of bearings that you would like to have a delrin replacement bushing to fit some of your saltwater reels? 
I would think that if the delrin works as good as the Shimano rep thought it would, then for reels prone to corrosion, just about any bearing other than spool bearings might be greatly benefited with a delrin bushing instead. I don't know what the price will be yet. he didn't think it would be much per bushing, if we could make volume orders.  What do you guys think about this and what would be a fair price per bushing to make it worth it?

[alantani]

when i hear pinion bearing, i usually think of the right main sideplate bearing in a lever drag reel.  that bearing has to be able to support both an axial load and a radial load.  a bushing will not support an axial load at all.   

[Pro Reel]

In a shimano freshwater reel, the pinion bearing only suports the pinion gear to keep it centered on the spoolshaft to make it into a super free reel. They  used to put a spool bearing on the spool, and then 2 more bearings at each end of the spool. Now they only use 2 spool bearing, one at each end, and suport the pinion gear, to keep it from rubbing on the shaft,with a bearing

[alantani]

ah, got it!