Penn 4400ss

[Midway Tommy]

Big surprise!      I just stumbled upon a like new Penn 4400ss in the box with the manual, schematic, extra spool and extra set of drag washers today for a price so good I couldn't pass it up.    It took me about 30 seconds to gobble it up. 

Now to tear it apart, check it out & service it.     

[steelfish]

pictures or never happened 

[Midway Tommy]

pictures or never happened 

It did indeed happened, Alex. 

No tutorial on this one since it's a pretty basic tear down, but I did take a couple photos for reference during the disassembly process so I'll include them.

I took a pic of the spool click setup for later reference. The spool was kind of dirty.   



There are a couple little tricks one should know when taking the reel apart. The first one is that after you remove the side plate you can remove the main shaft by loosening, but not removing, the two screws that hold the retaining plate on the oscillation block. Once loosened you can pull the main shaft out the front. The main gear cannot be removed at this point, though. There is a small drive gear that turns the oscillation gear on the opposite end of that mechanism that will not allow the main gear assembly to be removed until the anti-reverse eccentric rod is removed.

At this point it's time to remove the rotor. The nut is standard right/tight thread. Here's a photo of the front of the body after the rotor is removed.


Here's a photo of the back side of the anti-reverse ratchet gear. The spring that activates the A/R dawg rests in a groove. The spring has a bend on one end that goes in the slot in the A/R dawg. That is what activates the anti-reverse. You can see it in the above photo.


I took a couple of photos of the bail screws because the shiny plated screw goes on the bail spring side and the brushed satin finish screw goes on the bail trip lever/line roller side.



The long leg of the bail spring goes into the hole in bail plate & short side goes into the rotor. The bail spring had originally been greased. I don't grease bail springs so the grease was removed and I lubed it with ArmorAll when I reinstalled it.


I took a photo of the bail trip configuration because there's a small spring under the trip lever that has to be installed correctly for the bail trip to function correctly.


At this point it's time to remove the innards, but before the main gear can be removed the eccentric rod must be removed. Remove the E-clip and remove anti-reverse dawg and remove the lever on the rear end of the rod. Pull the rod and tension spring straight out the front of the body. At this point all of the internal parts can easily be removed. The rest is pretty straight forward and installation is just the opposite of disassembly.

I did my normal servicing process of a good lacquer thinner soak and burnish/polish for all the metal parts. You can see the thinner parts jar in the bail plate photo. All the painted, anodized, graphite and plastic parts were cleaned with Original White Goop and a warm water Dawn wash.

Here's the finished product, box papers & all. 




       

[happyhooker]

I like the looks of that bail spring & AR setup.  Nice work & nice score, Tommy!

Frank

[JasonGotaProblem]

Nice! I always liked the 4400SS. Ive seen at least 3 with the post that the oscillating gear used to sit on snapped off. Seen some creative fixes for it too.

[steelfish]

thanks for the pictures Tommy, few years ago just before the pandemic (2020) I was about to buy one of these reels locally, contacted the guy who was selling the reel but after some calls he never answered or called me back, so never got it, but its a model attracts me because its like a small tank, this one and the Penn 712z which I already found one from our friend Keith, I got one in perfect condition when he was selling most of his reels.

[Midway Tommy]

Nice! I always liked the 4400SS. Ive seen at least 3 with the post that the oscillating gear used to sit on snapped off. Seen some creative fixes for it too.

There's another temperamental place one has to be cognizant of on these graphite bodies. There's a small stud sticking up just behind the pinion gear to keep the pinion from pushing all the back into the body. One has to be very careful when installing the pinion, bearing, etc. That stud can break off pretty easily. You even have to be careful about it when inserting the main gear.

This is the first graphite bodied reel I've ever been associated with or worked on. I can truly say I'm not a big fan. I'm not sure what their design limits are but I'm pretty sure you wouldn't want to push them past that. 

Alex, that may have been a fortunate missed contact.