Penn 80vsw problem

[Van]

Guys, I'm trying to help a friend with his basically brand new 80vsw.  He used it for one tournament and put it away and now it doesn't want to reel.  When turning the handle it just goes against the drag but the spool doesn't turn no matter how tight the drag is.  Free spool seems to work fine.  I'm not exactly sure what happened to this reel as it's a fairly simple thing. 

[alantani]

pull the left side plate and remove the spool.  i will bet that the big black plastic cap on the spool backed off. 

[Van]

Do you mean the drag cover plate?

[alantani]

yes.

[Van]

I opened it up and noticed a bit of water in it where the dogs go into the drag so I decided I would take the drag cover off (which was super tight, I had to take it off with a chisel?)  Anyhow I cleaned the drag up which had some water/salt type stuff in it.  Put it back together and still the same crap except now I need a new drag plate cover.  One thing I noticed that didn't seem right is the small screw that goes into the shaft seemed to pull the drag in too tight towards the spool, I'm not sure if that's correct or not, but I looked at the schematic and it looked like everything was in it's correct place.

[alantani]

is it working now?

[Van]

No, same thing.

[alantani]

does the handle turn with the spool out of the reel?

[Van]

Yes, it also turns fine while in free when it's together.  When it's not in free the handle feels like it's pushing against the drag instead of the spool spinning.

[alantani]

i'm running out of ideas here.  tough without being able to look at it. 

[Van]

Yeah I don't know, I don't even understand how it could be happening. I mean it's not like it's the most complex system.  Might have to send it back to Penn, I hope they will fix it after I tore the drag cover up.

[Van]

Or how much would you charge to fix it?

[alantani]

figure $60 at most for service, but then add the cost of parts and return shipping.  send an e-mail if you want to ship it out.  it's still wierd.....