squidder jr 146 hard to turn the handle while in freespool

[steelfish]

I found that Im not alone with this problem, but on the thread I found the next sentense it didnt show up if the problem was solved or now

... With my 146 it's difficult to turn the handle in freespool but when in gear everything is normal.

I bought a nice 146 on a fleamarket on the initial review before buying it, when I put it on freespool it spinned nice but only for 10-15 seconds, so a good cleaning should take care of that and everything else was pretty in good shape so I got it.
now, yestesday I did a nice and deep cleaning to the reel, the bearings now spin forever, I mean they spinned really for long time when I tried them on the spool shafts while the spool was out, them I assembled the reel and it feels 3x smoother while the drag is engaged but when you put the eccentric lever on freeespool it feels really rough and actually stops the spool, its even hard to turn the handle and it dont spins even for 2 seconds but before when I got it it spinned for at least 15 seconds, as soon as you disengage the freespool its back to feel smooth and freely while cranking the handle, its so smooth that you can turn the handle blowing air with your mouth to the handle knob but then you activate the freespool with the lever and becomes rough.. weird, right?

anything sounds familiar on this problem on your experience?

[thorhammer]

sounds like pinion not disengaging, Alex. see if you can reverse the yoke; I can't remember if the Squidder yoke is chamfered on the bottom or not but it may not engaging jack properly.

[alantani]

the main thing moving from free to drive is the pinion gear.  pull the side plate check for binding of the pinion gear somewhere.  it's very odd that it would do that. 

[steelfish]

well, I double checked everything yesterday but I was really tired and it was late so I just put the reel aside to check it out later today, I will check how the Yoke was installed after work, thanks for the tip John.

this reel still have the HT-100 drags in really good shape, they look almost new, I dont know if they come factory with HT-100 or they were installed recently, I commenting this because I noticed on the squidder tutorial that AT dropped the pressure washer which comes at the end of the drag stack, I just read that today so I still have to check that too, I dont know if could be related to my actual problem or not.

thanks guys.

[steelfish]

Ok. I just checked the reel and now its working much better, I did two things:

Filed a bit the yoke making a "ramp" so when the jack gets on freespool it rides on the yoke easily, before it was almost pushing the yoke to the bottom instead of pushing it against the springs.
And Also untightened a bit the bridge screws, they resulted to be overtighten and didnt let the yoke and Jack to work properly.

Now my last question, are this reels this sensible on the bridge screws or mine needs some new parts?
Maybe New yoke and ecc Jack?

BTW, now the spool (empty) spins for 15-18 seconds on freespool and the handle spins with the drag engaged for 8-10.. really nice compared how it was before

[oc1]

Are/were the four bridge screws in the right places?  The two that have a section that is not threaded go through the yoke and yoke springs.  If you put the two screws that are fully threaded there the yoke and springs can catch on the screw threads.  When that happens the yoke can lean forward instead of lifting straight up.  When the yoke leans forward the pinion also leans and can rub on the spool shaft.
-steve

[Alto Mare]

Just to add a little more.
At times, when it feels rough going in and out of gear, the spool shaft and pinion need to be inspected for burrs. Also, check the eccentric spring, if it is sticking up on the eccentric it will cause the jack to tilt a little, if so, sand it down flush with the eccentric.
Some of these reels will get knocked out of square if the screws are not set in correctly.
Visiting Penn, we noticed they use a special godget during assembling that holds the plate on the frame by air pressure. Having such a tool keeps everything aligned .
Most of us are not lucky enough to have such a tool, so I always set my screws in a diagnal pattern to help keep even pressure.
Probably a good idea to loosen all the screws and do the same.

[steelfish]

@  oc1, bridge screws are correctly installed the whole time.


@ Sal, I will try to set the bridge screws again on diagonal pattern, pinion was sanded a bit on the inner hole on the service, if you put the pinion on the spool shaft (out from the frame) the pinion spins freely, before that if was also bit rough because of some green spots buildup on it.

Im remebering that this same issue happened on 4 small peen reels, the 209L reels, in order to have the spool to spin freely on freespool I had to tighten the bridge screws and then make 1/2 turn back with the screwdriver to make it work smooth.