New Tyrnos Drag Washer

[SoCalAngler]

Well I ordered a drag washer for my new Tyrnos 8 II, that I have not fished yet, from Dawn at Smoothdrag before she left on vacation. Well three days later it arrives in the mail, she must of mailed the day I ordered them....Thanks Dawn. I do live here in So Cal so they didn't have to travel too far but it still was nice to get them so soon, it speaks of her customer service.

I disassemble the reel just enough to get the spool out to change the drag washer, I had already done a pre fishing service to this reel so no need for a full teardown. Here is where the fun begins, well sort of. As I try to back out the screws holding on the cooling shield I notice their on tight. Not just tight but stupid tight. I break loose all of the screws except one. This sucker will not budge and with all the force I used I strip the screw. I had left all the other screws in place waiting to break them all loose before I took them all of the way out. I take out one screw and look at it and I find the culprit...lock tight.

Sorry for the poor picture quality as I do not have a tripod but I do have a cheap camera. If you look closely at this screw you can the lock tight.



I thought I might dremel a slot in the screw head and use a bit of a larger screwdriver hoping to be able to get more of a bite on this screw. Well this screw it so small I was worried if I made the slot any bigger there would not be enough metal left and I may strip the rest of the metal off the screws head.

After some thought and a lot of trying I was able to get a very small pair of vice grips to squeeze down hard enough on the screws head to be able to unscrew it. I know the picture is blurry but you can see the screws head is no longer round from the force needed to be applied to be able to remove the screw. Did I say that these screws a tiny? I mean the suckers are itsy bitsy.



Here are a couple of pictures of the drag washer that came out of the reel. As you can see it only has fibers in one side of the drag washer and it looked rather cheaply made.




I did not include a picture of the washer from Smoothdrag but it is the same outstanding quality that they are known for.

After greasing and replacing the drag washer I am now getting 11 pounds at strike and 18 at full with no loss of freespool. If I crank down the drag anymore I start to get side load and start loosing freespool. I now have much more faith in the drag of this reel and what is $12 worth in terms of having confidence in what you are fishing with especially if you hook into a fish of a lifetime?

[kamuwela]

thanks alot for taking the time to post this for us. yes the do put locktite on the worst places. i have seen them on cooling shields, drag plates, alert ratchets and worse of all the reel seat. the only place i found that needed it was on a hidden clip on a penn vsx. the horshoe clip was part of the two speed return. the screws vibrated off and the gear's would not engage.                                                       thank's again
                                                                         kamu