South Bend 707

[DougK]

really it's a relabelled French reel, Sup-Matic 770..



bought this after getting a South Bend 469 splitcane spinning rod, and looking for a reel to match. It was between this and the SB 404 reel, which appears to be cheaply made. I do have an Orvis 100 as well which would be period-appropriate for the rod.

My example was nasty inside. The original grease had turned to glue and there was a layer of slightly newer grease which wasn't helping at all.



Two things I couldn't do:
- undo the screw that holds the spool assembly together. The spool removes with a push-and-twist, so the drag assembly remains all together. I wanted to get in there to clean up, but the screw would unscrew for a bit and then stick tighter than I wanted to force it. This happened in both directions, so it's not a question of L threading.
- remove the rotor from the frame. Again I'd have preferred to get in there to clean up. However the rotor screws L onto the worm gear and it wouldn't budge. Even after heating until the magic smoke came out it it was firmly affixed.

Luckily in both cases the parts were still working OK. The drag works well and it might as well go on like that. After washing the frame and cleanup on the worm gear, the schematic led me to believe a dribble of oil on the interface to the rotor would get through to the ballbearings inside. That worked and the rotor spins well and quietly.

This has a two-speed gear system.
There are two gears on handle shaft, and a smaller shaft that fits inside the handle shaft. Smaller shaft has a springloaded pawl that engages in a slot of each of the gears, high and low speed. When the smaller shaft is pushed in or pulled out, the pawl will engage a slot on the inner surface of one of the gear rings and the other gear will spin freely on the shaft. This pawl comes out of a slot in the handle shaft and also engages that shaft, to transmit the handle rotation to the gears.
See schematic pdf attached.
 
Then the main gear that drives the worm has two gears below it, one for each of high and low speed gears. These stay engaged with the high/low gears all the time, while one of the high/low spins freely and the other drives.
When changing gears the handle may spin for part of a turn, before the pawl engages the new gear.

The gears on the two shafts, engaged with the main gear. With the smaller internal shaft pulled out this is in low gear.



Cleaned up and ready to go back,



back together,



The first pic shows the reel in high gear. Here's what it looks like in low with the gear-change knob on the handle pulled out: also with the handle turned around. My 1974 Mitchell 308 has a similar trick handle, springloaded so that it can be pulled back and rotated so the paddle is inward. Must be a French thing.



Back in the day there surely was a surplus of green paint, as this appears to be just the same color as the slightly later Heddons..



Once the water around here gets liquid again I look forward to trying this out..