Sleeving my first Accurate.

[Pelagic Playtime]

Hi all. I can sum this up as the most successful failure I have ever attempted. Here is what I did. (Sorry, no pictures).

The reel I worked on is a BX2-500.

The tubing that fit the reel is: K&S engineering stock #130, 7/32 X .014 brass tubing.

The first thing I did was a spin test to see how long my reel would freespool. I tried to put the same amount of energy into the spool with each spin. I got 12 to 15 seconds of freespool before breaking down the reel.

The next steep was to go to a lathe and cut two aluminum plugs of the correct dimensions to fit into the spool bearing pockets and stick out beyond the spool rims. I measured across the plugs, and then subtracted the length of the two plugs. This gave me a pocket bottom to pocket bottom length of 1.1425 inches for my particular reel.

I went back to the lathe and cut the tubing, shooting for a length .002 inches bigger then the 1.1425 dimension. I nailed it the first time (brag, brag).

I removed the side plates off the bearings and cleaned and re-oiled them with some lite oil from AVET. I re-assembled the reel with the sleeve and did another spin test. I got an excellent time of 52 seconds. The sleeve worked as advertised. However, I now experienced a pronounced grinding feel to the reel that I suspect is each ball bearing freefalling and going clunk as it comes over the top at the 12 o'clock position of the races.

To have a precision instrument like an Accurate reel have that kind of feeling is just unacceptable to me. So I removed the sleeve, did another spin test and got a very smooth 35 seconds.

To me, more then doubling my freespool time to 35 seconds, aint bad. So I will live with that.

If any of you have experienced this and found an answer to it, I would love to hear about it. And to anyone who is considering sleeving their Accurate, it does work. I just couldn't live with the funny feel. Am I just being some kind of goofy here?

Tight lines all.

Pelagic Playtime.

[alantani]

any possibility that you got metal filings into the bearings?  i've done that before.........

[Pelagic Playtime]

I don't think so Alan. I did all my machining at a buddys house and the bearings were lift at home. And I took care to see to it that the bearing pockets were clean so the aluminum plugs would bottom out so I would get an accurate measurement.

Playing with the spool, if I turned it on it's end, the grinding feeling would go away. But held in the horizontal, the feeling would come back. All this while holding pressure on the springs. And like I said, when I took the sleeve out, the bearings ran real smooth.

So the only thing I can figure, either without the sleeve, or with it and the spool turned up on end, all the bearings were in constant contact with some surface inside the bearings. But held in the horizontal, there is enough freedom to allow one or more bearings to rattle around somewhere as they travel around the races, giving a feeling similar to a grinding feeling.

While the spool is truned right side up, I could spin the spool and watch the inner race of the bearing and it wasn't turning so I don't think that the sleeve is turning around the spool axle.

I am thinking of taking off .002 inches more off the sleeve and see if that changes anything.

How do you rate 35 seconds of freespool?

Pelagic Playtime.

[alantani]

35 seconds is going to be longer than any cast that i could ever make!!!!!  so you turn the spool downwards and it makes a grinding noise?  it means the lower bearing is getting leaned on and it's the one that is bad.  that's actually how i check them.!

[Pelagic Playtime]

No Alan. It's when I hold the reel level that I get it.

I'm not done with this thing yet. I'll let you know what happens.

Pelagic Playtime.

[Pelagic Playtime]

Hi all. O.K. I continued to experiment with my sleeve tube by putting it into a drill chuck and using a honing stone to adjust it's length. I was shooting for taking off .0005 inches at a time then putting it into the spool assembly and spinning it to check for that grinding feeling.

When the sleeve tube got down to 1.1390 inches the grinding feeling stopped so I put the reel back together and gave it the spin test. After a few spins, I settled on 106 seconds. That's right, 106 seconds. It just kept going and going AND GOING! And if that wasn't shocking enough, several times after it stopped spinning it spun backwards as the spool found and settled on it's heavy side, so you know that the bearings are perfectly aligned and free to spin.

Now, the 1.1390 sleeve tube dimension is SMALLER then the 1.1425 bearing pocket bottom to bearing pocket bottom dimension of my spool. Don't ask me why this works but it does, so the lesson here is to experiment with the length of your sleeve until you get the best results.

So, this experiment has turned out far better then I had hoped.

Hay Alan. Are you going to be at the Long Beach Fred Hall Show? If so, tell me where and I'll stop by and say hi.

O.K. On to the next reel.

By the way, can anyone recommend a good tool for taking out horrible backlashes? I mean besides diagonal cutters?

Pelagic Playtime.

[Norcal Pescador]

Picking out a "professional overrun" - a very, very small crochet hook, a bright light, no interruptions, and a good sake or single malt.

[Dominick]

"wind 3 or 4 more turns on,strip the line off with your left thumb on top of the birds nest,comes out easy.just repeat until its all gone,if your right handed,  opp; if your a lefty."

Wallace:  Huh?  Dominick

[JGB]

trying to measure the inside land to land spacing is difficult to do correctly. i have found that if you want to measure and cut a sleeve you will need a caliper that has a 1" long  piece added to the micrometer end ( I used a 1" calibration tool held in place with a sleeve) . The caliper needs to be a replaceable anvil type where the anvil can be removed from the end. this is so you can get the spool in and out of the caliper. The rumbling/grinding is the ball side play when the bearing preload it too loose (the balls oscillate side to side in the bearing grooves and also chatter against any groove damage caused by heavy side lodes (high drag settings). You can run loose preloads if you use perfect bearings and ABEC 7 (brand new ABEC 5 will also work ok). So here is the scoop on the setting the bearing preload when sleeving. alow .004" of free play for most bearings some may need .003". If you use less the .002" - .003" the bearing will get quite and you not get the supper free spool just something in between. The reason is that the balls will be held biased to one side of the bearing race and rub slightly on the side of the race. Fine tune for quietness or ultimate freespool.

Jim N.

[Pelagic Playtime]

Ya Jim. I suspected it was something like that. I am repeating this process with my BX2-400 and I am getting the same thing. With the success of my BX2-500 plus seeing the same thing happen with my BX2-400, I think that it is possible to adjust the length of the sleeve to get all the grinding out while still getting a very long freespool. But I think we are talking about adjustments of just 1 or 2 or 3 ten thousandths of an inch at a time. It should be very possible to go too far and have to make a couple of attempts to nail it.

I can see why Accurate doesn't do this as this is not a mass production kind of thing.

Hay Alan, you gonna be at the Long Beach Fred Hall Show? If so, tell me where and I will stop by and say hi.

Pelagic Playtime.

[JGB]

Here is what I use to measure the spools. The anvils pull out from the end. Other brands remove from the inside and do not work for this application.
Note the extension piece.

Jim N.

[alantani]

yes, i get to go to the fred hall show this year.  i'll be flying down on wednesday, hanging out all day, staying overnight and then attending part of thursday.  i will have to leave by 6pm to catch a late flight back home.  i will be hanging out with a buddy, ben ouano, and just cruising around.  see you there!  alan

[Pelagic Playtime]

Just finished sleeving my BX2-400. This one was much harder. It took me five attempts to get it to freespool as good as my first reel.

I have done two reels now and what I have learned is that to get that rattling grinding feeling out, the tolerance of your sleeve length is god-offal tight. Just one half of one thousandth of an inch and you can go too far and loose the great freespool that you just had.

So, what can you live with. Cut the sleeve .004 inches over the pocket bottom to pocket bottom length of your spool and give it a try. If you are getting great freespool and can live with the rough feeling, run with it. If not, adjust the length of the sleeve by one half of one thousandth of an inch (.0005) at a time until you get the feeling you like. And be prepared to miss a few times until you get it just right.

I hope my experience with sleeving my Accurate reels helps and encourages others to try it. It's a lot of work, but once you get your first reel just right, you will never be satisfied with an Accurate reel as it comes out of the box.

O.K. On to my last reel.

Pelagic Playtime.

[alantani]

I can see why Accurate doesn't do this as this is not a mass production kind of thing.

Pelagic Playtime.

but accurate is not a mass produced reel.  at $500 to $1500 per reel, i think they should be able to get this done.  alan

[Pelagic Playtime]

Let's all give them grief about it at the Fred Hall Show.

Pelagic Playtime.