Senator 115L drag upgrade but STILL weak

[Thalassic.Angler]

Hello anglers, I just purchased a used 115L off of eBay. Purchased with minimal wear on it. I took her apart and she was clean and internals were all intact. I purchased a 10-tooth gear sleeve off of mystic along with the HT-100 carbon drag set. I replaced old sleeve with new sleeve and greased and cleaned the rest of the internals. I then put in the new drag washers, but before putting them in I used a good amount of Cal's drag grease on the carbon fiber washer rings. After the reel was all finished with new sleeve and washers, I put the line on and tested the drag. The drag at max 'hand-crank' power was around 14-20lbs when I used a bass scale.

Why is the drag so weak? I thought that after adding the new sleeve and greased washers that max drag at hand-crank would be around 30-40lbs. At least that is what I heard the reel would be putting out after those upgrades after searching through online forums. How can I get more drag put of this reel? I would like to have at least the 22lbs of drag that the reel advertised before the upgraded drag components.

[alantani]

the order has to be right.  can we see the order of washers that you used?

[Bill B]

A couple of things could be wrong:

1. The drag star is bottoming out.  Add another tension washer to the stack to increase the height.

2. The last eared washer is not seating inside the main gear.  During reassembly ensure it sits correctly.

3.  As Alan said the drag stack was assembled incorrectly.  Start with CF washer and alternate CF, Keyed, Cf, Eared, etc.

Bill

[alantani]

I just worked on a 12/0. 30 pounds of drag without really even trying!