Gear Failures.

[Irish Jigger]

The Chinese 112H2's are exhibiting a high incidence of gear failures under normal fishing conditions in the UK. I know of one captain who has had gear failures on all 8 new reels this year. There are others awaiting gear sets from the US as the Chinese gears have been examined and found lacking in quality.
The only solution at present is to replace the gears with US made ones.
These gears are 4:1 with 3x HT 100 Drag Washers similar to the original 112H set up.

[alantani]

if the drags are not greased, then it would not matter what the gear set was made of.  it would still fail........   

[BMITCH]

Does penn as a rule now grease their drags If not why haven't any of their other gear sets failed

[Irish Jigger]

Have yet to see a new Penn with greased drags apart from those I greased myself. Only Penn gear failure I ever saw was on an ungreased  Jigmaster 505HS.

[Alto Mare]

Grease does definitely help, but most gears fail under excessive stress, don't ask me how I know. This year I destroyed a few Penn gears and Black Pearl's. The 505 failed at around 18lbs, the funny thing, all three pinions failed, the main gear was still good on all. Two sets were Black Pearls and one Penn.
On the 115 ( 9/0), both main and pinion failed at over 40lbs, one was black Pearls and one Penn. Those are some crazy numbers, but I believe the twisting of the frame helped, a full frame should take you to those numbers with no issues.
All washers were greased.

With that said, I don't know anything about any Senators 2.

[Ron Jones]

I wonder how rigid the 112H2 graphite frame is? A 3 stack of HT-100s should only get you 15 pounds of drag or so, it seems odd even brass gears are failing with those numbers. I think they are right to look at the manufacturing process of the gears.
Ron

[Alto Mare]

Keep in mind, above I mentioned the 505, those always had problems. I did the same test with the 500 and it did good. Actually, I took it to over 20lbs with no problems.
Usually the twisting of the frame will fry your gears, but looks like we're dealing with something else with the 112H2 .

[Irish Jigger]

Usually the twisting of the frame will fry your gears, but looks like we're dealing with something else with the 112H2 .

We are Sal. It appears that the 112H2 gears are not meshing fully and both the pinion and main are failing.

[broadway]

    If they don't mesh properly is it possible they are probably torquing as Sal mentioned.
If I had to guess I'd say the gears are probably inferior to the USA gears (I know who made them in the past for them) just like the rest of the reel (inferior stainless).
Dom

[alantani]

well, this is all possibly true, but the gears do not necessarily have to be inferior.  i have a couple of charter guys that bring me their reels and their customers are constantly crunching up the gears on new reels.  even some of the ones i've serviced have come back damaged.  i think it is just the nature of the business. 

[erikpowell]

Alan, Sal, Doc, Tom, guys,
You guys see way more thrashed, shredded, and blown up gear failures than probably a lot of us do.
And I'm starting to feel a little guilty; like it's a disservice NOT to more closely check for wear or possible flaws. 

Myself, i'll usually not bother to check gears closely unless I feel something off after I'm finished with a service.
Then at best I use a pair of 2x reading glasses to have a closer look. I've rarely if ever noticed a stripped or damaged gear and I often just toss a fused gear&drag (that my soak doesn't breakup before my patience wears off) and order Penn replacements.

So, my humble request would be for some close-up photos of various stages of gear wear and/or failures of various cases you've seen.
Can the camera pick up such detail?

That would be great & useful for many as well!   

Muchas Gracias & Vinaka vakalevu.

[Tightlines667]

Of the 100 or so large sized trolling reels I've serviced to date...I have only found one bad gear.  It was in a Penn Internationsl 80STW that has seen alot of heavy use, and hasn't been serviced in about 7 years.  It was driving me nuts, cause I just about replaced everything in the reel shimmed the main gear to ensure perfect alignment and the reel continued to make a grinding noise which got worse under pressure.  I noticed it happened with the same frequency when cranking and was present in both high and low gear and directly related to the gear ratio.  I marked all 4 gears at the place it was making noise, and rotated the gears 90 deg, tec ranked and remarked.  The marks on the pinion where where the prob was.  I removed it, took a closer look, under light magnification, and found a hairline crack and teeth that had expanded ever so slightly due to it.  I also checked the shaft and spool to make sure they were not bent.  Some of the local long-time reel repair folks I mentioned it to, said in all their years of repairing reels they have never seen this problem.  Just thought I'd share.

The crack can be seen most easily seen directly below the pinion gear tooth that has the bright glare on it.

[Makule]

Aside from a gear that actually breaks a tooth (or two or three), one cause of "gear failure" is related to either the hole in the gear becoming worn and/or the shaft upon which it rides becoming worn.  When that happens, the pressure of the gear upon each other forces the gears apart and, since they are riding on worn surfaces, do not come into full contact with each other (i.e., the teeth surfaces only partially engage each other).  As the wear become greater, the amount of surface contact becomes less, until it reaches a point when the pressure exceeds the ability to the metal to retain its shape.  This leads to excessive wear on the gear teeth, but can also cause complete failure if one or more teeth break completely.  Granted, this should not happen if the engineering is correct, and the manufacturing is also within correct tolerances (i.e., the diameters of the shafts and the holes in the gears are what they're supposed to be).  One assumes the engineering to be according to Penn design.  Consequently, if there is a problem with new reels, it may either be due to inappropriate materials, or manufacturing outside of specified tolerances (or combination of both).