lever drags

[farmer56]

farmer56 here , just a question , i have very "FEW OF THEM" so i have a question about spool lateral travel . When i say very few , that is a derogatory remark about lever  drags . i know zero about them . I love conventional reels . With the lever drag reels i have when in free spool , the spool CAN move  lateral "ALLOT" . I am not used to that quality or feature , I am used to 1/16" side play with my Penn or Abu Garcia reel.So is that normal .  A WANT TO BE LEVER DRAG LOVER .... OR MAYBE HATER ... dennis just dumb as grass

[Bill B]

I'm only familiar with the Penn Fathom LDs. And yes in freespool there is some side to side play.  This is due to the Fathoms being a pull type drag system.  Imagine the lever working a cam that pulls the spool towards a drag plate.  I was deathly afraid of LDs.  Now for saltwater boat fishing I hate to use star drags.  Only taking 3 out of 9 rigs, 2 are backup rigs.  Think of a lever drag as a bait runner.    Bill

[boon]

Yup, that's how they work. There's a spring that pushes the spool away from the drag plate and all the rest of the components on the right side plate.

[Donnyboat]

They work good, have a look @ the tutorials on some of the leaver drag reels, maybe shimano TLD reels, Alan had a good post on adjusting them, cheers Don.

[jurelometer]

Agree with the others.  Here is a more detailed explanation:

A typical star drag reel goes from freespool to engaged by moving the pinion toward the spool, locking the two together mechanically. In order for this design to work, lateral spool travel has to be minimized. 

On a typical lever drag reel, the pinion is attached to half of the clutch (drag), and the spool to the other.  The drive train is connected by pulling the spool and pinion together (usually spool toward pinion), engaging the clutch.  Going from freespool to engaged works gradually, just like using a clutch on a car's manual transmission.  But in freespool, the clutch halves have to be kept fully separated. They use a coil spring or two on the shaft to accomplish this,  so the spool on a lever drag can be a bit laterally bouncy without the engaged clutch pulling everything tight.

Lever drags have the potential to be a simpler design than a star drag, but that is up to the manufacturer. 

One other note:  The ball bearings in lever drags take increasing axial (lateral) load as the drag is increased, and ball bearings are not good at axial load.  Set the drag too high, or go too long at higher settings, and you can ruin a bearing, usually the one on the pinion side.  This is probably the most common lever drag failure reported here.

A good question in my opinion.  Most folks seem to want to know the "how" and not the "why" about working on reels.  Knowing the "why" is more useful when you need to figure something out.


-J

[farmer56]

This really comes down to my age. Never grew up with that modern contraption , so it "should"  scare me!! The responses clarified the working order . Thanks guys.maybe not so quit dumb as grass now . dennis

[farmer56]

Why aren't lever drag reels made with  bearing and cup then like car wheel bearings , that way they could take the side load ?? Or am i out in left field where i do spend a fair amout of time in !!! dennis

[jurelometer]

Another good question.  The proper design solution is to use thrust bearings on both sides to take the load off the ball bearings.  Some newer reels use one on the left side.  Probably a tougher fit to get one on the right (handle) side.

Instead of thrust bearings, most lever drags just use larger ball bearings that can handle more axial load than small ones.  Less room on the right (pinion) side, so this bearing is typically the smaller of the two and therefore the one that gets crunched first.

On the larger big game style lever drags, the bearings can get quite large, which is not good for casting, but these reels are not meant for casting. The spools usually weigh a ton, the reel weighs two tons,  so smaller bearings for casting ain't gonna make a difference.

On some of the smaller lever drags that are intended to be more castable, they have to compromise between drag capacity and casting performance.  These reels tend to have a lower max drag and a higher incidence of bearing failure, which I attribute to the smaller bearings - folk expect more drag out of these reels than they are capable of. 

The lighter grade Avet reels are a nice simple design with some castable models that have made this tradeoff.  Fish them within their limits and they are nice reels.

-J

[redsetta]

Not forgetting twin-drag reels, such as Accurate, which have drag plates on both sides of the spool, create no axial load on the side plate bearings, put out mountains of drag and cast well...

[jurelometer]

Hmm.  Confused for a second here on the twin drag.  Let me think this out. 

There should still be axial load on both sides with the twin drag designs like the Accurate (drag against both sides of the spool), otherwise  there would be no clamping force, and therefore no drag.  The axial load should be roughly halved for the same drag setting as you are using two drag surface pairs instead of one.  The load will be on the bearings on the drag plates unless they use thrust bearings.  The pinion would drive the main shaft instead of a drag plate, so no "pinion bearing", and probably room for more substantial bearings in the drag plates which won't affect casting.  OK.

This type of drag requires that the shaft rotates in order to drive the drag plates on both sides of the spool.  The most common lever drag design has a main shaft that does not rotate, making the drag adjustment mechanism less tricky to design.

Overall though, a more sensible design when optimizing for braking.  Haven't ever seen a car with disk brakes with pads on only one side of the rotor

-J