Fin Nor Reels

[Bryan Young]

This is the reason my friends will no longer carry Fin Nor reels.  He cannot sell reels with 2 different finishes when someone wants to outfit their boat.

[wallacewt]

ask for a discount,that will ease the pain,fish couldnt care less.

[Jimmer]

Are those Max Doubt's santiago 25s? Got any pix of the inside? What do you think about them other than the anodizing? Thanks - Jimmer

[Bryan Young]

Yes, they are Ted's reels.  They are definitely heavy duty, like all Fin Nors that I have worked on.  Sorry, I didn't take more pics because I wanted to get them back to Ted.  The reels have a push bar, dual drag system.  This means that on there are 2 drag washers with a pressure plate connected to the spool.  When you increase the drag, the shaft moves towards the left.  The way it seems to be designed, the outer drags engages first and as the drag increases, the inner drag contacts the pressure plate at higher drag levels.  For some reason, probably the inner drag comes in contact with the pressure plate, ever so slightly, that you cannot get a full and true free-spool.  There is always a little friction.  Good for trolling reels and deep dropping with heavy weight.  Since this is the way the reel performed out of the box, I packed the bearings, even the spool bearings with grease.  The drags were also greased with what looked like a similar drag grease as Shimanos.  I wiped off the grease, and applied Cal's drag grease, let soak while I grease all of the bearings.  Then when ready for assembly of the spool, wiped of the excess Cal's grease.

One thing I really liked was that the pinion bearing in the right side plate is accessible without removing the gear assembly.  One thing I didn't like was the postion of the belleville washers.  When installing, you need to postion the belleville washers at the end of the spool shaft, work it around the main gears then insert the shaft into the pinion bearing in the right side plate.  Once that is in, then you install the frame.

It's not a hard reel to work on.