Poseidon

[alantani]

yup, send it.  we'll see what's going on!!!

[alantani]

ok, charles (windrush) shipped the reel and it arrived today.  the poseidon is an accurate copy with a small difference.  the accurate dual drag system is two drag washers, one on either side of the spool, and metal pressure plates equally spaced.  to get around the patent, the poseidon has the pressure plates spaced differently, with different return springs to match. 



when i opened removed the drag lever cap, the first thing i noticed was that the c-clip was gone. the only thing left was the shim washer. this is the reason that you could throw the lever forward and not get drag. 



i went to clean out the excess grease from the cap, and found the c-clip.  these will also pop out in accurate reels and has been a problem before.  to do so, the lever has the be thrown forward to an excessive drag setting.  this means user error.  remember this, because it will pop up again. 





the reel comes apart easily.  it has always been my habit to tear down the frame first.  it's just something i do.  i this case, the frame was put together without a single dab of grease.  this one observation alone gives this reel a "two thumbs down" rating.  it gets put back together with a light coat of grease everywhere. 



next is the spool.  the springs and washers were entirely out of order and the drag washers were barely greased at all.  there were no schematics, so i had to put the spool back just trying to do what made sense.  got it working with no extra parts!



the side plate was actually easy.  three radial bearings and two anti-reverse bearings with a dog back up. 



and done!  of course, the loose braid had to be pulled off and repacked, then a topshot had to be added.  fiddling with the drag, the c-clip popped off.  i ended up regrinding the slot and getting a new stainless steel c-clip.  i ended up repacking 200 yards of original 65 pound solid braid and added a 75 yard topshot of 40 pound mono.  setting the drag, i got 12 pounds at strike and 15 pounds at full.  not great, but not bad either. 





it has become my standard that no reel leaves here unless it is absolutely ready to fish.  that includes setting the drag.  so many times i have found problems that i might not have caught otherwise.  anyway, it's done and will be shipped out in tomorrow's mail.  we have crab pot's reel in the mail, and that will be the last poseidon reel that i will ever be working on.  seriously, guys, don't buy these.  they're junk. 

[alantani]

now as far as how all this happened, i have a theory.  remember the braid that was slipping on the spool?  yeah, that.  i'm thinking that the original owner spooled on the braid loose with no tape as backing.  it was spongy and slipped like crazy.  trying to get some drag, he might have advance the preset too much.  throwing the lever forward might have caused the original c-clip to pop off.  bet that's what happened.  all because the guy didn't spool up the braid properly. 

[jurelometer]

Interesting...

Circlips are not ideal for stronger thrust loads (like lever drag assemblies). According to the textbooks, the most common failure is from groove damage.  If the clip came out, something bad probably happened on the way out.  So  future failures are probably more likely.

Assemblies require tight tolerances to hold anywhere near the stated clip thrust capacities, which are not that impressive to begin with. For example, the spec for the tolerance on the groove width on a shaft diameter found on a typical reel is 0 to .002 inch, less than the width of a piece of paper. And whatever is pushing on the clip has to be tight to the shaft and square to the clip.

So maybe if your company is doing a top job on machining with quality material, sourcing good clips, and managing quality control, you might get away with your circlip use (still a bad idea IMHO), but when a third party  comes along trying to make a copy of your design at a lower price point, that weak link in the design is going to be more readily exposed.

-J

[alantani]

i used the cutting wheel of the dremel to cut the c-clip groove a little deeper.  then i used a better quality c-clip.  it should hold. 

[Windrush]

Kudos to Alan for taking on this challenge and powering through to give me a functioning reel!  I am a seasoned angler (old) with a large collection of reputable reels and the ability to maintain many of them.  I do have a fetish for newer models or something that catches my attention as something different.  This reel was auctioned and advertised as new.  I was intrigued by the manufacturing in Thailand and the promise of a 60# drag.  So, I bought it.

Upon receipt I immediately noticed the preset knob was cranked all the way down to the point it took a tool to loosen it and even then it was hard to move it with my hand.  After freeing it the lever position would not change the almost non existent drag.  I went through multiple knob settings and lever adjustments but no affect on the drag.  So, I took it apart.

I had done extensive searching for the reels and could not find dealers, manufacturer, schematics etc.  Disassembling it I knew soon after that I was over my head, I couldn't see anything jumping out as wrong except for some of the order of the components didn't make sense and there were 3 flimsy washers stuck in a place that made no sense so I removed them and decided to seek professional help.  My reasoning, if this a knockoff of an Accurate then a reel repair that services Accurate could easily figure this out.  Good luck convincing them.

After a couple of failed attempts on the east coast, I decided to post on the forum to see if anyone else had experience with this company and specifically this model.  Alan answered the call and took on the challenge.  I wasted no time in shipping it off before he could come to his senses and change his mind.  I wrote down what I know about the reel and asked that if it would not achieve its original specs could it be functional.  I was convinced someone before me had taken it apart and probably compounded the problems although appearance wise it did look new.  Any time I buy a used reel and get it with a super tight drag adjuster I get very concerned.

It came spooled with heavy braid which I taped over to keep it out of my way.  I did not notice that the braid was loose and slipping as I was concentrating on the drag.  Putting the clip back on the shaft under the knob was painful but I thought it was correct which it obviously wasn't as it was off when it got to California.  Probably a bad design as well.  Alan remanufactured it!  Lube and grease was nonexsistent except for the gears and right side plate.

By correcting the order of the drag system, lubing everything, adding a much stronger clip and removing the braid and replacing it correctly, I will now have a functioning reel!  That said, I will never trust this one like I do my Penns, Shimanos and Newells but will be fun to play with.  It's a shame they went through the manufacturing process without focusing on the minor but vital functions of some of these small components.

I've learned a lot from the forum, enjoyed the different points of view and opinions, and the help it provides with specifics is invaluable.  Now, I cannot fully express my gratitude to Alan for his guidance, the methodical and photographic sequence of his work and the shear willingness to take on the unknown, but know I really appreciate the help.  Now that Poseidon is known to Alan, he's over it!

Thanks to all who chimed in and I wish everyone a safe and happy holiday season!

Charles

[Crab Pot]

And it's still sitting on my desk at work Alan.

Been slammed at work.

I'll get it out tomorrow. 

[Gfish]

Interesting. Accurate uses the E-clip too.

[jurelometer]

Good on Alan for getting the reel working!
But I think it is worth it to illustrate  my point about those circular clips.


Looking  at the spool/shaft photo, it looks like a 1mm depth groove for the e-clip.  I plugged an actual  product software file for an e-clip of that size  into a CAD program, and added a shaft (5 mm) with a 1 mm groove.  This is a cutaway view of the fit:




Not much meat...

BTW,  E-clips are designed to fit exactly to the groove diameter. Unless the shaft was not machined correctly, making the groove deeper will not allow the clip to contract more and increase surface area contact with the groove, it just gives the clip a chance to end up uncentered, which would cause one of those nubs  to have even less surface area contact.

E-clips make sense for holding parts on small shafts that are not under heavy load.  But I find it a bit baffling to use one for holding out against a lever drag cam.

-J

[Gfish]

Yeah Dave, now that you put it like that. On my Accurate(Twin Drag) you gotta remove the cast control cap on the tail-plate, then push on the spool shaft which gives you a few mm clearance on the gear-plate side, to pull the E-clip. A difficult for me procedure.
What would be the best way to secure the spool shaft under the drag lever?

[jurelometer]

Yeah Dave, now that you put it like that. On my Accurate(Twin Drag) you gotta remove the cast control cap on the tail-plate, then push on the spool shaft which gives you a few mm clearance on the gear-plate side, to pull the E-clip. A difficult for me procedure.
What would be the best way to secure the spool shaft under the drag lever?

Also compounding the problem: you don't want the clip subject to angular twisting loads, so the cam side is the "wrong" side of the shaft for any eclip. 

Looks to me like threading the end of the shaft is the most common solution. Makes sense to me.  Easy to manufacture correctly,  and in the wore case scenario, you just have to re-tighten a nut.

To be fair, the solution only needs to hold more  clamping load than the axial load capacity of the pinion bearing,  which is fraction of a properly designed and manufactured eclip assembly.  And a slight change in diameter makes the assembly much stronger(e.g., going from 5 to 6 mm on the bearing ID doubles the axial load capacity), so the problems are going to show up  more as the reels get smaller.

So much of modern reel design is legacy baggage. 

-J

[jurelometer]

Oops.  This is a copy of the Accurate twin drag, which means drag plates on both sides of the spool, which means that the shaft has to be keyed  for the drag plates, and the shaft has to rotate.  So threading the shaft end to provide both a clamping anchor and a drag preset is not an option.

Now we are getting into trading off between sub-optimal choices.  Too long to get into here, but I actually  played with designing a twin style drag, and the tradeoffs so far have all been messy.

You really can't take this kind of reel apart without a circle clip at the end of the shaft, hopefully with a ball bearing or something acting as a thrust bearing so that the clip is not rubbing as it turns with the shaft.

To re-answer your original question, I would sort of be inclined to jettison the idea and go to something easier to pull off,  like the multi surface lever drags used by all the other brands. But those have tradeoffs too, and many still use circle clips in a similar fashion...


When in doubt, go with the less tricky solution.

And again to be fair to Accurate, a properly machined shaft with a thrust bearing at the clip will hold much more clamping load than the pinion bearing can handle without binding.  And since the shaft is turned by a human while fishing, it is never rotating very fast. 

It is just that the slot has to be near-perfect for the clip to hold, which is probably more of a challenge for inexpensive knock-offs.  Which is not Accurate's problem.

-J

[boon]

Something is borked in the drag assembly if you only got 15lb at full. These reels will do way more than that, setting aside the sub-par metallurgy of many of the parts. They won't make the claimed 60lb or whatever it is but even the tiny ones will do 20lb without breaking a sweat.