bellevilles and bearing sleeves

[alantani]

Hi there, can you please give some more theoretical explenation of these two:

"heavy duty belleville spring washers (key #50) are the reason for that. an increased drag range is easy to accomplish in ANY lever drag reel just by stiffening up the bellevilles." What is the role of these washers ? Can't the reel do with a standard shimming washers ? 

and  "i'm going to shim the bearing sleeve to see if i can get more freespool." Can you please try to explain the tunning process ?  Thank you in advance, Moni

the stiffer the bellevilles, the more drag pressure get.  imagine a coil spring in this spot.  you would barely get any drag at all.  on the flip side, a set of plain flat washers would not give at all.  you drag would go from off to full with no give at all (much like the accurates).  the bellevilles allow for settings in between.  the softest setting is "()()", medium is "(())", and the stiffest is "((((". 



the bearing sleeve is also called a freespool sleeve.  when the drag is engaged, there is inward pressure on the two spool bearings.  it is an axial or lateral load on the spool bearings that will dramatically decrease the spin time of a spool.  these bearings are designed to carry a dynamic load perpendicular to the axis, and are typically rated in the hundreds of pounds.  think of the vertical weight of a truck resting on the axle bearings.  these bearings are not designed to carry an axial or lateral load.  to do that, you need a very expensive roller bearing or you need a larger ball bearing.  that is the only solution for the right main side plate bearing. 
for the spool bearings, there is another solution.  it is called a bearing sleeve.  it has to be accurate to within several thousanths of an inch.  it will allow for "zero load and zero freeplay" on the two spool bearings and will allow for the maximum spin time when the spool is in the "free" position.

[joe1234]

I new to this but have been playing around with changing bellevilles and I understand the basics of adding sleeves & why.

My question is does adding a sleeve help at all with handle binding at higher drag setting? Are there any adjustments to help with that type of binding.

Thanks Joe

[alantani]

the handle binding problem is not affected with the use of a spool bearing.  to fix that, you need thrust bearings. 

[joe1234]

Thats what I figured

Thanks