Quantum Iron Big Water series

[reelfishin]

I picked up a pair of Quantum Iron Big Water series reels over the winter while down in FL. I had happened on a local fishing fleamarket of sorts and thought I had gotten a decent deal.
Both reels are super clean and could pass for new but one just felt way better. Both are IR425CX models.
The one has excellent freespool, the other barely spins at all. The whole reel feels tight.
I tore both apart, gave both a full cleaning and service but I didn't change much. The good reel still feels fine, but the second reel feels tight.
Part of the issue is that the one way bearing near the handle had some corrosion on the sleeve portion and I found that the back up anti-reverse pawl is also damaged slightly.

I opened up and soaked the spool bearings, cleaned and lubed them up with some light oil I got from a local tackle shop which is suppose to be a fast lube, its yellow in color. It worked great on the one reel but not on the other.
After a lot of reading, I did polish the spool shaft and inside of the pinion, but that made little to no difference in my freespool. I replaced the right side spool shaft end bushing with a bearing, and I have the spool adjusted with just a minute amount of end play.
I've even tried swapping the spool and bearings from the other reel but they don't spin as fast in this reel for some reason.

The first thing I notice when cranking the reel is that I've got some gear noise when the handle is in the forward position. I had first thought that this was from the pitted bearing collar but I swapped the bearing, collar, and holder from the good reel to test and the gears are just noisey. Yet they're quieter in the other reel?

My thought at that point was to order new gears, and all new bearings for the second reel, plus a new one way bearing and collar, plus a new AV pawl, but after a call to Quantum I was told that these reels are too old and no parts can be had for them?
I also called three different reel parts places I found online and other than misc. bearings and aftermarket drag washers, I can find no parts for these.

Now my thought is that since these seem to be fairly well built reels, they don't look like the majority of the other Quantum/Zebco products I've seen, they were most likely built for them by a Japanese company and simply rebadged. Maybe even built from existing other components? I do know that they also sold these as Browning Midas reels but those too were Zebco/Quantum products back then.  An online search tells me that some of their reels, sold as Browning, were made by Bando in Korea, but the Iron and Midas reels are marked Japan and appear to be a step above the Bando built reels in quality.

The last I can see where these were sold after digging up several old Quantum catalogs is circa 2003/2004 or so. The reels I've got are date coded from 1998 and 1999.
I find it hard to believe that they had a special reel developed and built just to their spec only to offer it for such a short time. They were also very affordable reels compared to most others at that time as well, so unless availability was an issue, they most likely would have sold a good number of these, but they don't seem all that common these days.
I remember looking at them back when they were new on the shelf but wasn't in the market for this type of reel. I did buy several of the 6 bearing model Browing Midas reels back then though, all of which I still have. I've never seen a Browning variant of the larger models.

I think that if I could determine who built these for Quantum, chances are good that parts could be found.

Has anyone ever found a similar reel to these badged under another name? 

[Shark Hunter]

We need pictures reelfishin. That will help a ton.
There are some people here that can tell exactly what you have with a little photobucket.

[reelfishin]

Here's a pic,


its roughly the size of a Calcutta 700 only a bit narrower, they made a 435CX that was wider, more the size of the Calcutta 700.
They also made Levelwind versions (IR420CX/IR430CX models) There's also the IR320/IR325/IR330/IR335 models which were nearly identical but without instant anti-reverse and a slower 5.1:1 gear ratio vs. the 6.1:1 gears on the 400 series reels.

The reel foot is riveted on with four rivets and is stamped Made in Japan,
the pinion yoke is white plastic, which resembles a few Shimano and Abu reels, the gears are both brass or bronze with straight cut teeth.
The drag washers are 1" in diameter and made from some sort of fiber, the material resembles brake linings on a car.
The clicker sprocket is white plastic, all other plastic is made from the same gray plastic seen on the star drag.
The color of the plastic is identical to that on a Daiwa Millionaire S.
The spool bearings are 6x12x4mm,
the one way bearing is marked HFZ081208B and made by INA in Germany. (1/2"x3/4"x1/2").  VXB lists an RC081208 in this size, I'm guessing its the same bearing minus the brass collar on the OEM bearing?
The far end spool bushing/bearing is a 3x7x3mm.
The internals have similarities to Shimano, Daiwa, and Abu reels, none are identical.
Every one of these I've ever had open came well coated with a rather heavy blue grease, over the drags, gears and shaft.
The bearings are listed as SS but they are magnetic and I've seen a few get slightly rusty in the past.
When these are right, they have a fantastic freespool and a strong drag.
These were first listed in the 1998 catalog, and were around to at least 2003, maybe later.

Knowing that Quantum doesn't build their own reels in Japan, these had to be built for them or re-badged by them by a reputable builder in Japan.
The Browning clones to these were pricier but Browning was bought by Bass Pro and from what I gather, all parts were shipped to Bass Pro, but there doesn't seem to be a Midas badged version of these larger models.

I'm certainly not stuck on these reels, I got them cheap, but all of them are in nice condition and they can be nice reels.
I like the fact that they don't have any cast control as well.

[alantani]

the finnor/quantum reels are very much under appreciated......   

[reelfishin]

the finnor/quantum reels are very much under appreciated......   

I certainly agree in this case, for whatever reason, I've taken a liking to casting these.
I only wish Quantum still had parts for these. I've found a few bits and pieces here and there at various parts houses online but so far no one way bearing sleeve or 6.1:1 gear set.
I'd even settle for trying to make this a non instant AV reel by using parts from a 300 series but again, no source for parts.
If I could figure out who built these maybe the parts are the same as something else?

[reelfishin]

Here's a few more pics showing the gear case, maybe it will look familiar to someone who has had more reels apart than I have?

http://oi57.tinypic.com/2lbc8wh.jpg



http://oi61.tinypic.com/2rfvxup.jpg

[Shark Hunter]

Sorry I am no Help reelfishin. Hopefully somebody will chime in.

[alantani]

try https://www.southwesternparts.com/

[reelfishin]

That was one of the places I tried, they have a few items but the items they have can be substituted with aftermarket parts, such as bearings and drag washers. Things like gears aren't available for the IR420CX. I need a 6.1:1 gearset for the one reel, it got torn up on the edge when the AV pawl flipped backwards and jammed into the edge of the gear. I matched up a ratchet pawl from a smaller reel that I bought for parts, but the gears appear specific to the larger models.
The drag washers can be had from smoothdrag.com, I went through their list and came up with washers that will work, but I ended up mixing and matching a set of Penn HT100 drag washers that I already had here. The drag washers are 1" OD and 1mm thick, so all I did was match up the OD and cut the centers to match.
I really didn't have any complaints with the factory drag washers, they worked fine for me, but the one was stuck to the gear so bad I had to dig it out with a knife. It was as if they glued that washer to the gear.
On the reel pictured, I used a set of new Quantum washers I had for something else made from the same material, I just drilled the center of the bottom washer to match the raised center portion of the gear.  The original drag washers are hard fiber like material that won't cut with a knife, its not ceramic, but more like brake linings on the front of a car.
The OEM drag washers have 3M logos on them.

For now, I've file fixed the original gears, I took a rifling file and finessed the gears enough that they mesh properly again but there's a bit of gear noise at one point of rotation. Maybe that will wear in with use?

I replaced the bearings with higher quality SS bearings lubed with a PTFE lube I had here, between the better bearings and the addition of a right side bearing rather than a bushing at the far right end of the spool shaft, and some polish work on the gear and shaft, it will free spool for about a minute. A quick field test on a cheap 12' rod out in the field with 20lb mono spools the reel. I'll be spooling up with some 40 or 50lb braid before fishing it. I lubed the gears with a generic marine grease and coated the drag washers with Shimano drag grease.
The drag was originally greased heavily with a dark green grease that was pretty thick, it was all over everything. I found this same grease on all of these reels. The change in lube made the reel feel a lot better, even with the slight gear noise.

I've got other reels, I just like the feel of these for some reason, they cast well and seem super strong. I fished for years with a Penn Squidder, and bent a handful of spools and reel seats fighting big fish. I doubt the larger spool shaft and heavier bearings on these will bend too easily. Its also a bit lighter and a whole lot faster.

[reelworks]

I had one of those in the shop a while back, the IR420CX model, it was in need of some small parts and new drags.
The handle nut cover and levelwind cap matched up with a Shimano Calcutta. The drag washers I used were Shimano, but I didn't bother looking up what they were actually for. I just know they were a Shimano part number. I was thinking at the time the drags looked like those in a small TLD reel.

If you have gear noise, try loosening the phillips and thumb screws a bit, then apply some pressure to the spool with the drag tight and crank it a bit, this may let things fall into better alignment. They rely on that outer support plate to maintain gear alignment, if that plate isn't seated properly, the gears will growl a bit.

It wouldn't surprise me if that was a Shimano built product. Shimano has built reels for others in the past, as well as had reels built for them by other manufacturers.
There was a Shimano connection to Penn with the Silver 101-105C series spin reels and the Power Graph series reels that were made in Japan.

Chances are that reel got dropped not because Quantum/Zebco wanted to, but because the vendor stopped production of the reel in Japan, or stopped production of the parts it was using to build it with.

Those IR reels would have benefited from a magnetic or even a centrifugal casting brake of some sort, I think that too limited their popularity. The association with the Zebco name, which was put on some of the early models along with the Quantum name.

When Zebco lost the license rights to Browning to Bass Pro, they boxed up everything to do with Browning and shipped it to BPS who would have had little to no interest in the older models or support for the older models, chances are the parts there got sold off to various parts houses or scrapped.
The Quantum version of that reel was a lesser model to the Browning Midas which usually sold with a few more bearings and a bit sharper looking design.
The largest model I've seen in Browning trim was a 6SW or the equivalent in size to about a Calcutta 400. I'm not sure if they had the larger models or not.

Maybe call BPS and try and track down parts through them or find out where the older parts went.

Dig up an older Quantum catalog and look up who the factory service centers were then, and start making calls, someone is bound to still have a few bits and pieces around.