Old Satiga 20 30 40 / Shaft Bushing to Bearing

[kendopro]

I have recently started to do maintenance on my older saltigas and noticed a bushing for the drive shaft at one end on the saltiga 40.  I was searching the interwebs on a breakdown tutorial and came past a post that showed a breakdown of the Hyper HPK model of the saltiga which had a bearing instead of a bushing. Was there a bushing added to the other saltigas due to the price point or am I missing something here? If its simply the price point would it be worth it to upgrade all my reels to have bearings? Or is this a one off and the others should have bearings, I haven't opened them up yet since I found this bushing. So the reason I really started to think about this is that I noticed some slop against that bushing and shaft. (It moves more than I would like.)

As you can see here under the shaft there is a bearing.


And here you can see where they actually remove the bearing.


I added the original post here for anyone that wants to see it. Its actually very good.
https://www.ultimateangling.co.za/index.php?topic=732.0

[Cor]

Mimm, my experience has been that the bearing below the drive shaft is the first one to go bad and I prefer a bushing there.   It's cheaper and lasts longer and does not make any noticible difference.

The thing is we spin fish with conventional reels, cast and retrieve 100's of times per day.

I have not yet had a conventional reel that does not have some lateral play in the drive shaft and I think that this play is responsible for putting stresses on the bearing as the handle is turned, resulting in excessive wear.

BTW, the guy who wrote this article lives in Souith Africa and is fairly well known.