Why you check out those cheap reels....

[MolBasser]

So I just bought a Piscifun Alijoz 400 (now called the AlinoX) and before I put it into use, I cracked it open to see what needed to be done.....

Here is what I found....

As you can see, the location of the grease (at least they tried?) is essentially non functional.  The main gear is completely dry and the pinion only has grease on the yoke slot, but the gear itself is also dry.  The drag washers have some grease on them, but they are made of some weird material that seems like it is/was "dusty". 

I won't detail everything, but in addition to the grease, the ball bearing don't seem like they were lubricated either, so they got some ReelX.  I'm stripping out all this crappy factory grease and properly lubing it with Penn grease and ReelX.

[Brewcrafter]

Good Job!  This is exactly why The Boss has drilled it into our minds that ANY reel (budget, high end, whatever) needs to get a good pre-service right out of the box.  Worst case you just opened a reel and verified all is good and put it back together.  But all too often best case is it gives a opportunity to "optimize" the reel and correct deficiencies such as what you found.  Ultimately, all of our reels are hand assembled, and I suspect in some cases it is just some assembly line worker trying to meet a quota and bang out as many units in the shortest time possible with a minimum of rejects, so it is reasonable to assume that attention to detail isn't going to be at the same level as many of the folks on this site. - john

[MolBasser]

Yeah, mechanically this reel is sound.  It has plastic in places that I would rather metal, but in general it is good.  Having a backup ratchet for the anti reverse bearing is good.  The drag is good sized, but the material is a bit of a question.  I'm going to get the demensions and see if I can get carbontex from smooth drag or just cut from a sheet.  Certainly worth the $130 I paid for it.