Shimano stella 2500

[smallmouthaholic]

Will repeated,complete  submersions (cold and warm water) eventually cause the reel to bind? I'm also curious if fishing in cold air temps,3-5 days a week( down to 30 degrees) will eventually effect smooth performance from the reel going from cold to warm.heated air causing internal reel condensation?

[LTM]

SMA,

Anywhere that water can enter the reel will eventually start corrosion.  Decades ago when I first started fishing I read in mfg. owners manuals to dunk the reels in fresh water and allow to soak (w/drags buttoned-down) for a short time, then wipe down the exterior.  Well I did this for awhile and when I took my reels in for servicing; sure enough there was corrosion on the internal parts.  I ask around about this practice and was told its a good way for mfg.'s to make money selling parts.  NO, I would not recommend this practice.  Also, transferring it from cold to warm environment may induce condensation as you stated.  Using a toothbrush to apply a thin coat of grease to ALL internal surfaces is good preventative maintenance for ALL reels.  In regards to fishing in cold temps in the 30's (too cold for me) I would follow the suggestions of others and use/thin-out the grease and prep the reel as you would a car engine for winter time/cold weather conditions.  The viscosity of all lubricants/grease will increase in cold environments, thereby adding extra resistance (aka friction from lubrication).

Leo

[smallmouthaholic]

Thanks Leo-
                I'm also wondering if the friction ring in the 2500 Stella will swell from repeated submersions.
I've removed all friction rings from all of my ( 1000-2500 Stradics and Sustains which makes the reels ultra-smooth w/ no chance of binding issues following annual cleaning,bearing soak in M.E.K. followed by 1-2 drops of Ardent reel butter bearing oil.

                     Al

[LTM]

Al,

Not familiar with this reel or "friction rings"; hopefully Sal or one of the spinner experts will chime in and give you all the good info you need.

Be well,

Leo

[alantani]

under water completely?  i'm guessing it's corroded......   

[smallmouthaholic]

Alan,
        An associate and I have been servicing Shimano reels for 3 years. I am a Boca bearing dealer and we have installed many ABEC5 ceramic spool bearings in Shimano and Diawa casting reels. We have found through extensive testing that the boca ceramic bearings perform best w/o the bearing shields and run dry. We service the s.s. bearings w/an M.E.K. 3 stage soak and then apply 1-2 drops of Ardent reel butter bearing oil to each.(when dry) We use Shimano drag washer grease on the gears , moving parts and drag washers. We have serviced many Curados,Chronarchs,MG-50's, high end Diawas as well as Saros,Stradic and Sustains. This year we did 2 Diawa Steez ,2 Stellas and 1 Calais.

       The major problem has come from the 2 Stella 2500 spinning reels we serviced. Both came into the shop w/ gears as dry as a bone and somewhat stiff spool oscillation. They left the shop smooth as silk w/ index finger rotation of the rotor & spool.

         The customer was happy for 2 weeks and them mentioned they didn't seem to turn as freely. We took one of them down and serviced the bearings and used oil from boca bearings. Shop test proved it no better then ardent reel butter bearing oil.The customer still wasn't 100% satisfied.

          Now I found out one of them barely turns and to top it off,the customer admits to 2-5 complete dunkings every trip to remove snags and re-tie lures. He was also fishing 2-4 days all winter-sometimes in sub-freezing weather. I mentioned that internal condensation may be causing a problem( before I knew about the repetitive submersions. I'm the bad guy in his eyes and he also claims the gears have to be lined up precisely as they came out of the reel. We saw no arrows on any of the matching gears to indicate this.

          He claims he's always used the reels the same way w/ the dunkings and this situation is now out of control. We have serviced in excess of 50 reels w/ only one problem due to 1 0f 2  shim washers that Shimano stated that belonged in a specific spot. We all know that Shimano wouldn't admit to their binding problems in years past.

           Your thoughts-

                            Thank you,
                                           Al

[0119]

Did you say you remove the friction rings on spinning reels and keep them off? 

Shimano used to be famous for their binding rings, a.k.a. shimbindo they went by.  Its really something any brand of spinner will do since its just a fault of the way a spinner is designed. But the problem has faded with users being educated against dunking and Shimano loosening up the tolerance a bit.  Still dont look for Van Staal or Zeebaas performance out of a Stella.  Shimano tech support recommends never dunk any of their reels, to stop usage and do a complete tear down asap. Of course the Stella being an angelic bird, must be repaired by Shimano or its platinum warranty is void.  Tech support also advised never oil the friction ring as it is very sensitive to breakdown by certain chemicals.  Ive found INOX to be safe.

[smallmouthaholic]

Did you say you remove the friction rings on spinning reels and keep them off? 

Yes-on my own personal Shimano Stradics and Sustains. Personally,I'd never own a Stella as I feel they are w-a-y over priced for the performance they deliver.

[alantani]

          He claims he's always used the reels the same way w/ the dunkings and this situation is now out of control. We have serviced in excess of 50 reels w/ only one problem due to 1 0f 2  shim washers that Shimano stated that belonged in a specific spot. We all know that Shimano wouldn't admit to their binding problems in years past.

           Your thoughts-

                            Thank you,
                                           Al

al, i live in this house with a wife and two daughters.  i have learned that there are some battles that i cannot win, no matter how logical i try to be.  regarding your stella owner, i am going to presume that he is honest and that he truely believes what he says.  that means that there is no logical argument that you can offer that will make him change his mind.  here is my recommendation.  send his reel to shimano at your expense, have them service this reel and then ship it back to you, then give him his reel back and refund his money. 

now, the best part.  he will continue to dunk his reel.  it will seize up again.  he will HAVE to bring it back to you and he will pay you for expenses for the initial service because he will realize on his own that you were right and he was wrong.   or, he will not have a problem ever again and he will never come back.  either way, you are time and money ahead. 

[captbob]

I fish in 30 degree weather quite often off of Lake Erie early March and April, but I don't bath my reels! One thing I have learned to do over the years is keep the gear outside in the garage, or truck boat whatever I am fishing out of at the time. If I want to bring it in to oil bearings or whatever, do as you do with a camera in the winter, place it in a plastic bag, tie it shut and bring it inside to let it come up to room temperature slowly, this will keep it from condensation, and you can open the bag after an hour or so and oil the bearings or whatever you need to do and life stays happy, Calcutta's, Stradic's, Sustains, Symetre's, and Curado's, all I have owned for years, and no shimbindo here! I did have a 4000 Sustain that I used break cleaner to wipe the friction ring down and it turned it to gum in a matter of a couple of weeks, never had a problem when I quit using anything but water to wipe it down with, and all my Shimanos keep the friction rings on them.

[captbob]

forgot to mention, Cal's light all purpose grease on the gears, and Yellow Rocket fuel on bearings and bushings, works great in the North Country! Keep it lite in cold weather.

[smallmouthaholic]

and all my Shimanos keep the friction rings on them.

Captbob-

The sole purpose of the friction ring is to keep the spool from rotating and tripping the bail on a cast.This has not become  an issue since I removed them  on all 2500 or 4000 Shimano Stradic or Sustain.spinning reels.This does result is a very smooth ,rotating reel since there is "O" friction cause by the rings on the inner spool.

                    Al

                   

[d.dano]

Hi guys. My name is Darren. The post started by Smallmouthaholic is regaurding me, the customer. There is always two sides to the story. Al makes softs bait for a living. I was a loyal customer who spent thousands of dollar in cash as well as pumped his lures on a forum. I fished with this guy as well as helped him in his personal life with task too difficult for him. Al offered his services to service my reels. I agreed to start with a Shimano Stella 2500FB. This particular reel literally had very little use since purchased. All my other Stella reels (4 total) are 3000. The main difference as a user is the handles are bigger on the 3000 versus the 2500. I never liked the small 2500 handle and have since purchased a 3000 handle to replace it.

The Shimano 2500FB that Al received was as brand new. Literally hardly used. Al claimed to have seviced over 200+ reels now in his post he says 50. He talks in his post about being a Boca dealer and doing exclusive bearing test. Truth is at the time of this original post Al just started with Boca after only a year prior on another forum criticizing a member for purchasing Boca bearings.

When I picked up my finished Stella 2500FB I had to hear an earful about how overpriced, how the drive gear is made out of plastic (it's a magnisium alloy), How he had to purchase special tools to disassemble, and how it was in such horrible shape and now it was all better. Remember nothing was wrong with this reel. Upon spinning the reel I noticed it was tighter, much tighter. Al claimed it was from freash grease. Sounds good, I can appreciate that. I took my reel and at the same time dropped off a Stella 3000FB. The Stella 3000FB had alot of use and was admittedly not as smooth as factory when purchased.

After using the Stella 2500FB for a few trips I noticed things were not right. The reel would bind. It would do this intermittenly. Also the smoothness was gone. While rotating the handle you could feel what I best describe mechanical friction like metal on metal. That's the best way to describe it. Al couldn't be bothered. He did take back the Stella 2500FB and try different oil after a few phone calls. The problems only got worse and now the same with the Stella 3000FB.

I made no less than 10+ phone calls to Shimano service to get the reels back to where they were before Al serviced them. Here what transpired. On both the 2500 and 3000 the line roller assemblies were assembled in the wrong order not allowing the line roller to spin. The spacer 6016 was not installed between the ball bearing. it was installed on the end of the assembly. Also 6019 a washer with a waist was installed backwards. Both the ball bearings inner and outer races were sharing the same plan not allowing them to spin. Rotor Nut 9838 was way overtorqued putting too much pressure on Bearing 7801. On the 3000FB Washer 41 was missing which Shimano say is needed. Al says it was not there, Shimano are liars and some reels have them some don't. Shimano claims to keep the smoothness factor Pinion Gear 9862 and Drive Gear 9881 should be re-assembled in the same fashion the were disassembled. The reasoning is the gears wear into one another. By not aligning them as they were disassembled rapid wear will occur. These are words from Shimano tech support. When Al was made aware of this he scoffed and laughed up a storm. I found this step to be easy by simply getting the Oscillating Slider to the back postion and simply marking the gears with a sharpie. I have since got both reels back to that factory smoothness.

Another reel that Al serviced was one of my 5 Shimano Calais. I no longer use this reel. I will eventually work on it. What is happening is occasionally the star (drag adjustment) locks up while turning the handle causing the drag to be set full off allowing the spool to free spin. This has happened numerous times. Also strangly the handle almost fell of on a fishing outing. Doing a boatside repair I found after taking the handle off that the rotor nut was a turn from falling off the rotor. Not sure what is going on here.

Also Al serviced a Shimano Stradic that the anti-reverse was faulty. The reel was in for some gear replacement which he performed but the anti-reverse was 100% faulty. This got by him.

Al claims I dunk my reels 2-5 times per trip several times per week. Does this sound rational. My reels occasionally get wet. They are fishing reels. They sit on the deck of my boat in rain while fishing. I do on occasion dunk a reel to free a snag. The thing is the Stella reels Al serviced are set-ups I use for wading. They don't get dunked due to the fact I can't wade up to the snag to free it. Al has the personality that he has the answer for everything. When suggesting I dunk the reels I sarcastically give him the answer he wants. I own at this time 15 Stradic reels, 4 Stella reels, 5 Calais reels, a Steez and 2 TD type R's. Non have ever had a problem that is being described after Al serviced them.

As a buisness owner Al never wanted to resolve or even look into the problems listed above. Al would routinely bring up the subject on price of the reels, which would then lead to me telling Al what I discovered cleaning up after him. It got to the point where we no longer speak.

There are two sides to the story. Thank you. Darren

[Bryan Young]

Sorry to hear your troubles, and glad you got your reels working again. Some people should know their limits.

[Irish Jigger]

Poor Al,you have my sympathy having an ungrateful customer like that. I would just tell him to "Foxtrot Oscar" and
take his reels to Shimano.