Mitchell 304 -- Rotating assy runout

[Nismoron]

I just bought my first old Mitchell reel to "restore" and use.
I received it and it as the usual paint chips, etc, but everything else seems good and tight except...

Upon disassembly, I  noticed that the little plastic oscillation slide (81 131) has some wear to the underside that allows the central axle to twist slightly during reeling.  Other that a slight rotational wobble to the spool during use, I do not see any other problems.

Here comes the problem.  The rotating head (81 1260) has a tad of runout during use.  If there is no line pressure, it is fine.  But when a small amout of pressure is put on the line, you can see the head deflect about 1mm.  just enough to barely contact the spool and cause a slight "chuff, chuff, chuff" noise.  It is not full time contact, just once every rotation.  Thus, the drag is jerky because I get the same deflection as the line is pulled off the reel.  I fully disassembled the reel again and see nothing that seems to have any amount of wear.  I noticed that there are two washers under the axle nut.  One is copper and against the face of the rotating head.  The other is stainless and was ABOVE the bail trip (81 122)  According to the diagram, they should both go UNDER the trip.  Now, which is which?  I'm guessing the copper one is the adjustment shim. Is it possible/likely that I need another shim or two in there?  Or could there be a more serious underlaying problem.  I am considering getting a new NOS rotating head due to the paint chipping/corrosion.

[alantani]

a couple of guys here are pretty good at mitchells, and one has a pretty extensive inventory of parts.http://alantani.com/index.php?topic=4425.0  hopefully one of these guys will chime in.  i'm not much at spinners.