Gear grinding on 113H

Finest Kind · May 21, 2023, 08:51:15 PM

I measured the thickness of the main gear and as John Brewcrafter mentioned, it is thicker, 15/1000. I can't tell if it is rubbing though. I am waiting on new Penn brass main gear and new pinion. When I get them I will try them out and if that fixes it I might save the SS gears for another reel. Meanwhile I polished the spool shaft, inside of the pinion and yoke with 0000 steel wool. Didn't help. In the pictures you can see that with the reel together the spool is pushed toward the tailplate side. Before I tighten the screws the spool sits in the frame perfectly. Now I'm wondering if the main gear hitting the side plate could be pushing the spool over

Keta · May 21, 2023, 10:07:56 PM

Use a Sharpy and blacken the gear where you think it is rubbing, reassemble, crank it and dissamble. If the pen marks are rubbed you found a problem.

Finest Kind · May 21, 2023, 10:52:10 PM

Quote from: Keta on May 21, 2023, 10:07:56 PMUse a Sharpy and blacken the gear where you think it is rubbing, reassemble, crank it and dissamble. If the pen marks are rubbed you found a problem.

Thanks, I will try that!

PacRat · May 22, 2023, 05:30:25 AM

I read all the updates to this thread and I would suggest centering the spool before delving into the mechanicals.

To do this, remove the bridge, gears, and eccentric jack. Put the spool back into an empty frame and adjust the end-play on the tail-plate. If you can't center the spool, look to your crank-side bearing cup. Pull the bearing and check for shims under it. Also check the bearing for thickness. One last check is to make certain the bearing cup is pressed all the way in.

Once your spool is centered and free-spooling well, you can move on to the mechanical bits in the drive train.

Finest Kind · May 22, 2023, 04:41:12 PM

I took the reel apart again this morning to try the suggestions from PacRat and Keta, but I never got that far. The blue Yamaha grease I used on the gears had turned Red! Yamaha/bakelite grease was all over the main gear, pinion and sideplate. I cleaned the main gear off and put it back in the sideplate. It is rubbing everywhere. I measured it with my cheap calipers, and the aftermarket gear is substantially larger in every dimension. Total diameter across the gear teeth:20/1000 >. Total diameter across flange:6/1000 >. Total thickness:9/1000 >. Not sure how this obviously very high quality gear set could be that far out of spec. At any rate, I will be going back to the stock gear set for this reel. Thank you everyone for the help and advice. I would not have known where to begin on this one!
John

Gfish · May 23, 2023, 04:04:08 PM

Hmmmm. Very interesting. Never measured one before...

Finest Kind · May 23, 2023, 04:39:56 PM

Quote from: Gfish on May 23, 2023, 04:04:08 PMHmmmm. Very interesting. Never measured one before...

HaHa! Yup. Me neither!

Gfish · May 23, 2023, 07:05:14 PM

Interested to see if the stock gears make it work.

jurelometer · May 23, 2023, 07:20:35 PM

Quote from: Finest Kind on May 22, 2023, 04:41:12 PMI took the reel apart again this morning to try the suggestions from PacRat and Keta, but I never got that far. The blue Yamaha grease I used on the gears had turned Red! Yamaha/bakelite grease was all over the main gear, pinion and sideplate. I cleaned the main gear off and put it back in the sideplate. It is rubbing everywhere. I measured it with my cheap calipers, and the aftermarket gear is substantially larger in every dimension. Total diameter across the gear teeth:20/1000 >. Total diameter across flange:6/1000 >. Total thickness:9/1000 >. Not sure how this obviously very high quality gear set could be that far out of spec. At any rate, I will be going back to the stock gear set for this reel. Thank you everyone for the help and advice. I would not have known where to begin on this one!
John

If you are comparing a 3.25:1 gear set to a 4:1, the new main gear is going to have a larger outer diameter (and the pinion a corresponding smaller diameter). That is how you get the higher gear ratio. The ratios of the pitch diameter (at about the center of the tooth) has to change. Some extra ratio can be claimed by going to smaller teeth, but this will only provide a smaller change in gear ratio. So they probably had to cut it a bit close on clearance for the main gear. Penn went through lots of sideplate and bridge iterations, and some dimensions changed around a bit over time.

The other dimensions that have to be accurate are the center hole diameter and the inside wall diameter where the drag washers go. The overall height should be the same, but I wouldn't be surprised if an aftermarket supplier went a tiny bit tall to better fit a custom drag stack, and found that it fit on the reels that they tested with.

I never hotrodded a 113H, but if I remember correctly, the folks that did a bunch sometimes had to do a bit of grinding on the sideplates to get the necessary clearances. If you look around for posts from Sal (Alto Mare), you will probably find some good tips. Sal was the master at hot-rodding old Penns.

-J

Keta · May 23, 2023, 07:41:04 PM

Sal was involved in the design of Pro Chalenger parts.

Penn tolerances were all over the place, I know at least one time loose sideplate was used for dimensions and fitting resulting in gears that rubbed tighter sideplates.

Finest Kind · May 23, 2023, 09:12:36 PM

If you are comparing a 3.25:1 gear set to a 4:1, the new main gear is going to have a larger outer diameter (and the pinion a corresponding smaller diameter). That is how you get the higher gear ratio. The ratios of the pitch diameter (at about the center of the tooth) has to change. Some extra ratio can be claimed by going to smaller teeth, but this will only provide a smaller change in gear ratio. So they probably had to cut it a bit close on clearance for the main gear. Penn went through lots of sideplate and bridge iterations, and some dimensions changed around a bit over time.

The other dimensions that have to be accurate are the center hole diameter and the inside wall diameter where the drag washers go. The overall height should be the same, but I wouldn't be surprised if an aftermarket supplier went a tiny bit tall to better fit a custom drag stack, and found that it fit on the reels that they tested with.

I never hotrodded a 113H, but if I remember correctly, the folks that did a bunch sometimes had to do a bit of grinding on the sideplates to get the necessary clearances. If you look around for posts from Sal (Alto Mare), you will probably find some good tips. Sal was the master at hot-rodding old Penns.

-J

[/quote]
Thanks for the information. I actually thought the higher ratio gear would have thinner, and more teeth. I was surprised how beefy the teeth actually are. Brewcrafter pointed me in the right direction with a link to an excellent tutorial on how to fix the problem of the tight sideplate on the older external drag 113H reels. Unfortunately I am all in on my fishing season at this point and my time is short for working on reels. I try to confine that to the off season. I will end up fishing this reel with the 3.25-1 gears this season and see how I like it. Next winter I may give the sideplate modification a try if I feel it is too slow for the BFT jigging I plan to do with the reel. Thanks again to all the members who have shared their time and expertise.
John

Brewcrafter · May 24, 2023, 04:47:22 AM

I will encourage you to go back and look again at the link I sent above. The reel you see in the background of this photo is the one that was being modified in that post. Old machine habits die hard, and in the box with the reel I saved my build notes and pulled them out tonight in the hope that it might be helpful. Pretty much the same reel (113h External Drag), and the only "stock" Penn parts are the ones you can see (the side plates and rings) and pretty much the same quality aftermarket parts that you have (my joke - this is how you make a $40 reel into a $400 reel - and I have done it more than once - so much for my sanity

. As you can see in my original post, it took some minor massaging (this was the 3rd one I had done this to). Lee is spot on about part tolerances, of the 3 (all same model and roughly same model run with external drag) the amount of fitting varied from minor to "almost a drop in". For measuring clearances, don't overlook "poor man's Plastigage" AKA I stole Play-doe out of my kids toy closet. I am confident that the parts you have will work just fine with a little fitment - john 113h Modifications.jpg

Hardy Boy · May 24, 2023, 03:04:22 PM

Brewcrafter is spot on. I had to Dremel a hair on one and none on another.Cheers:

Todd

Maxed Out · May 24, 2023, 05:35:01 PM

Not sure if anyone mentioned this, so I'll pop the question.

Is your yoke installed upside down ?

Does your pinion move easily inside the yoke ?

Also some people have had to smooth out the groove on the pinion to get smoother feeling gears

Finest Kind · May 24, 2023, 05:54:36 PM

Maxed Out, I'm not sure what you mean by upside down. I think one of the pics I put up shows the yoke in the sideplate, but I'm confident that that's not the problem. It's the main gear rubbing inside the sideplate that is the issue. I am going to deal with it via hand work as per the tutorial Brewcrafter attached to an earlier reply since there is not a lot of room for error in the grinding, and I don't trust myself with a Dremel. Pretty tight quarters, and I really don't want to mess up this minty old sideplate.
Thanks again,
John