Angular contact bearing upgrade for Preywinder/Omoto (Avet clone) leverdrag reel

[jonathan.han]

Are the belleville washers in the correct or desired configuration? Also, check to see if they were "flattened" when you bumped up to the higher drag setting of 18. It would be interesting to see if the ACBs can alleviate binding albeit it won't come close to what a thrust bearing can do.

[Vabein]

Thanks for commenting, here's another update:

Jonathan: Belleville stack is back to the original configuration and I'm getting the same drag range as before, so no damage there.

Robert, Leo: Well I've definitely concluded about which way to install them, more on that below. I played around with some higher drag settings, and honestly I can't tell much of a difference in the range from 6 - 15 pounds of drag. Must have swapped between original bearings and the AC bearings 6 or 7 times. Binding is by no means awful, but I was hoping for some sort of improvement.

Anyway, the bearing cup is a really tight fit, and to swap bearings I've been warming up the sideplate by placing it in a plastic bag in hottish water for a couple of minutes. The bearing still won't come out easily, but I'm able to tap them out via two small holes in the bearing cup (positioned above the inner race). So during one of these swaps, the inner race, cage and balls fall out, leaving the outer race stuck. I'm then able to remove the outer race as well. After some cleaning up, I now have this:




I notice that the inner race is completely symmertrical:




The cage as well (irregularities are due to residual grease):




The outer race however is definitely designed to support load in the direction I suspected, i.e "downwards" from the camera, and opposite from what the VXB rep told me: 




Reassembling the bearing was actually real easy, and after cleaning it out with lighter fluid it spun just fine.

So I'm not sure what's next. Any thoughts on the VXB design? I was expecting the inner race to be asymmetrical as well, so that the the balls would be pushed at an angle against the outer race...

--
Vabein

[LTM]

Valbein,

Glad the bearing went back together and spins ok, this should suggest that the bearing wasnt harmed in the previous testing. Those later close-up pictures are great. Would it be possible to take a closeup showing the wider outer race to reflect the tracking of the bearings in the race and describe the direction of force.

Thank you,

Leo

[jonathan.han]

A symmetrically shaped inner race would still place any side load on the contacting edge of the inner race. That would explain why there is no difference in performance between a standard roller bearing and the ACB.

[Ron Jones]

I don't believe the inner race is supposed to experience contact, the "long" side of the outer race makes contact first to protect the inner race. Or I'm an idiot and am completely wrong.
Ron

[limitdown]

The inner ring on all AC bearings I have are symmetrical.
The inner flange of the outer ring takes the axial load (side pressure). This is the side that you put facing away from the reel. ie flange to the right of the pinion.
Here's are some pics of my SKF AC bearings disassembled.
Check my post from last March
http://alantani.com/index.php?topic=6771.0

[Shark Hunter]

Wow! You must have a nice Camera!

[LTM]

Gentlemen,

Ran accross this thread in a post in the Avet section (Yet another Avet bearing question....) which has some interesting points especially regarding a "bushing" instead of a bearing?  Copied the entire thread in order that the statements are not taken out of contex:

I agree with the above that a simple stainless bearing is your better choice than ceramic for the axial loads that are the bane of Avet reels, in general. Unfortunately, BOCA customer service did not seem to have an understanding of your needs and their product. If they really wanted to help you they would recommend a bushing rather than any bearing for utterly trouble free cranking for your application.

People love the basic Avets that fish them precisely as they were intended (Southern California techniques) and do not have a "heavy hand" with their tools. The rest of us find:

1. Avet pinon bearings are too small.

2. An SX or even LX is not designed for the type of fishing you describe as I understand them. It is a light live bait, light live bait trolling or casting reel not designed for heavy winching of lead day in, day out regardless of drag setting.

3. They hold up fine for their intended use, but are under engineered like most inexpensive lever drag reels for the average guy who can't understand that pushing the drag lever to full with a generous preset destroys his pinion bearing. "Why does it go to full if full destroys the reel?" is what the average guy thinks.

All reels are not suited to all tasks. Simple bottom fishing with generous amounts of lead are very well suited to star drag reels with mechanical dogs, low gear ratios or a big long handle mated to the gear ratio and your weight/target species. Replace the bearings with bushings, add a stainless gear sleeve and you literally have something that will last a century with routine maintenance.

If you need more instant drag like lever drag reels provide then you might have more success with heavier reels like the Avet Raptor series or Okuma 8II, Penn 12VSX and their large pinion bearings and 2 speed mechanical advantage.

[johndtuttle]

Gentlemen,

Ran accross this thread in a post in the Avet section (Yet another Avet bearing question....) which has some interesting points especially regarding a "bushing" instead of a bearing?  Copied the entire thread in order that the statements are not taken out of contex:

I agree with the above that a simple stainless bearing is your better choice than ceramic for the axial loads that are the bane of Avet reels, in general. Unfortunately, BOCA customer service did not seem to have an understanding of your needs and their product. If they really wanted to help you they would recommend a bushing rather than any bearing for utterly trouble free cranking for your application.

People love the basic Avets that fish them precisely as they were intended (Southern California techniques) and do not have a "heavy hand" with their tools. The rest of us find:

1. Avet pinon bearings are too small.

2. An SX or even LX is not designed for the type of fishing you describe as I understand them. It is a light live bait, light live bait trolling or casting reel not designed for heavy winching of lead day in, day out regardless of drag setting.

3. They hold up fine for their intended use, but are under engineered like most inexpensive lever drag reels for the average guy who can't understand that pushing the drag lever to full with a generous preset destroys his pinion bearing. "Why does it go to full if full destroys the reel?" is what the average guy thinks.

All reels are not suited to all tasks. Simple bottom fishing with generous amounts of lead are very well suited to star drag reels with mechanical dogs, low gear ratios or a big long handle mated to the gear ratio and your weight/target species. Replace the bearings with bushings, add a stainless gear sleeve and you literally have something that will last a century with routine maintenance.

If you need more instant drag like lever drag reels provide then you might have more success with heavier reels like the Avet Raptor series or Okuma 8II, Penn 12VSX and their large pinion bearings and 2 speed mechanical advantage.

As that is my post I will expand a little bit so that the application and meaning is clear.

As I understand the evolution of fishing reels, the basic Penn winches (ie reels like the conventional Surf Master and spinning 700 Series) used (and some still do) a plethora of bushings where we think of bearings as being the "standard" for smooth free spinning. When the Senator series came out (a more premium model) they touted their use of one bearing as state of the art for casting. Needless to say, this opened up a Pandora's box of both increased casting and fishing performance and maintenance nightmares. Bushings are fantastic for consistency and long life and ease of maintenance, but handle turning pressure is far higher on a day to day basis and spools do not get as much free spinning.

Fisherman love reels that have a handle that is easy to turn with no fish on the line as they save effort over the day. Free spool is a holy grail for many as it can lead to more fish caught (ie casting distance or free swimming live baits as the moment of inertia the bait has to overcome to take line off of the reel is less).

So a bushing rather than a pinion bearing would live longer than you or I probably will. They simply will laugh in the face of the axial load put on them by the mechanism in an LD reel in comparison. Unfortunately, the handle turning pressure would get dramatically stiffer as the drag preset went up and the increase in handle turning pressure under load might be completely unacceptable for market acceptance.

In some sense the bearings both make the LD reel design possible, but also simply limit how much they can do for us because simple bearings that aren't too big and expensive are needed for cost reasons. The Angular Contact bearing remains the Holy Grail of LD reels. We just have to get someone to commit to the number needed and the increased cost. Guys at Avet and Penn etc have probably lost sleep over this plenty of nights. Unfortunately it is risky to take the plunge and do it (as in my experience people lose jobs when they make bad design/marketing decisions, even if they are right. The market doesn't care if you are right. The consumer cares about price, cosmetics and smoothness 9 times out of 10. It can be impossible to overcome their perceptions that lower price is always better until they have gone through many cheaper models).

In the quoted post where the fisherman is reeling a lot of lead back and forth off of the bottom the increased reliability of a bushing for the Pinion might serve him perfectly well as it would be immortal and he likely deals with cold water fishes that don't fight hard. If he has no casting or light use then the additional friction from the bushing can just be compensated by a bigger handle and then effectively doesn't exist. It's only when we want our reels to do many things well that bearings really come into their own (ie cast, fish artificial lures, let live baits free swim).

TL;DR IF you want your reel to last forever, replace nearly every bearing with an oil injected brass bushing. See Squidders and Jig Masters and the 740Z as examples. These reels however have limited acceptance in the marketplace because we place so much emphasis on casting distance and "smoothness" ie low handle turning pressure at the retail level. What we need are guys that can take an angular contact bearing fit reel and a regular LD reel then dial up the drag preset and show the consumer what they are getting.

best regards

ps I think someone somewhere was gonna do some testing with a bushing rather than pinion bearing in their LD Reel, then again it becomes a problem of finding the exact right size to fit the housing of their reel and the spool shaft which I think is a rather unusual size combination for commonly available bushings. You can make a reel nearly immortal with bushings, the questions is how many people will enjoy fishing it.

[Alto Mare]

Excellent explanation John, by the way where have you been? You can't take those long vacations, unless related to fishing.

[johndtuttle]

Excellent explanation John, by the way where have you been? You can't take those long vacations, unless related to fishing.

And great to see you back as well Sal.

I am marooned inland in a research project. Stay tuned, should have a tutorial on the Penn Torque 25N lever drag in the next few days.



best regards

[Vabein]

Haven't done any more testing on my end, but just wanted to follow up on some of the replies.

Leo: Sorry, didn't get any more closeups before reassembling the bearing, but I think it's pretty clear which way the load goes, as confirmed by Limitdown's pics and explaination.

Limitdown: Thanks for sharing! Seems the SKF bearing design is quite similar to the VXB. I'm glad you're getting the results you wanted for your project. Were you able to compare the performance of the AC bearings vs the factory bearings in any structured way? Of course the important thing is that reel works they way you want it, but it would be interesting to be able to put some numbers to it.

John: Interesting points regarding why manufacturers haven't done this already.


As I said earlier, I'm not sure what to try next. One thing I considered was setting up a simple test (outside the reel) to measure how well the bearings spin under different (axial) loads, while eliminating as many "external" variables as possible. Any ideas for a rig for this? I'm not even sure what sort of forces we're talking about - how much "weight" is placed on the inner race of the pinion bearing when I'm at, say, 10 pounds of drag?


--
Vabein

[Robert Janssen]

As I said earlier, I'm not sure what to try next. One thing I considered was setting up a simple test (outside the reel) to measure how well the bearings spin under different (axial) loads, while eliminating as many "external" variables as possible. Any ideas for a rig for this? I'm not even sure what sort of forces we're talking about - how much "weight" is placed on the inner race of the pinion bearing when I'm at, say, 10 pounds of drag?

Yes, I've been sort of ruminating over that... not sure 'zackly how, but maybe something in the lathe... As far as "weight" is concerned, it can be derived from the quantity, dimension and compression of the belleville spring washers. More or less, anyway. And i happen to know that the full compression of the bellevilles in the Avet = the total rise of the cam, within 0.1 mm.

.

[Tiddlerbasher]

Regarding the orientation of an ACB:
The wider outer race should always be against the load bearing non-moving surface. For our purposes this would be the sideplate and the spool. The spindle is considered to be the moving part.
This is true for a pullbar or pushbar system. The only difference being pullbar - left side spool and right side plate. Pushbar - right side spool and leftside plate.

[LTM]

Guys,

The orientation of this bearing has been bugging me for the past couple of days. Since I dont know the specific names for the different parts of the bearing (which may be adding to confusion here), I hope to use general language in a specific manner. In general terms, deformity is what causes bearings to fail. Deformity being worn balls inside of races, rusty ball bearings (irregular surfaces), rusty/worn races and surfaces, crushed/warped outside races as well as inside race's trapping the balls from movement. Therefore any deformed surface or component of the bearing will slow down or stop the bearing from smooth operation. That said; it would seem that the standard bearings are being crushed from the excessive side/lateral load. This bearing with the recessed inner race would be oriented so that the inner race is recessed from the opposing force, NOT still subjected to the entirity of the opposing force to be collapsed as normal.  By orientating the inner race away from the opposing force would allow the extended outer race to provide a sort of buffer or crush zone before the inner race and ball bearings are crushed to a point of non-operation.

Leo

Edit: Understand the flaw in this process now.