Drags in Refurbished Reels

Started by Fisherman2, May 23, 2023, 03:35:53 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Fisherman2

Hey all, I'm a newbie and this is my first post, so play nice!

Recently I have been refurbishing some of my older Shimano Stradics and putting carbontex drag washers (with Cal's) into them.

What I have noticed is that when this change is made, the drags adjustability is dropping massively.

For example with a Stradic Ci4+ 4000FA, it's drag locks down with less than 180 degrees off turning the drag knob.

 What's the advice for this issue?

Hardy Boy

how did the thickness of the DW compare ? did you thicken the stack?


Todd
Todd

Fisherman2

Quote from: Hardy Boy on May 23, 2023, 03:44:18 AMhow did the thickness of the DW compare ? did you thicken the stack?


Todd


With the example I'm referencing, the stack is thinner by a bit

Charlie

jurelometer

#3
Welcome!

 Not sure how stack height matters as long as the range of drag you want is available.


A couple thing to verify first.

1.  The parts have to be put back in the same order and orientation.  If the drag stack is using belleville spring washers, the cup direction of each affects how quickly the drag ramps up.

2.  It might be worthwhile to make sure that the grease coating on the CF washers is extremely light, so that that extra clamping load is not just to push excess grease around. Running on pure grease as a friction surface decreases the coefficient of friction even more.

Assuming everything was put back together the same:

The adjustability is a function of spring load. The greater the tension, the more clamping load per mm of linear travel (in other words,  degree of revolution of the drag tension knob/lever/ star).  But spring tension does not increase linearly with travel.  The percentage  increase in load per millimeter of linear travel keeps going up as the spring compresses.

The other thing going on: Greasing the drags decreases the coefficient of friction, so you need more clamping load to achieve the same drag. 

My guess is that after greasing, the spring must be compressed closer to its limits to work within the drag range you are interested in.  One degree of knob rotation is adding more clamping load than before. As strange as this may sound, if my guess is correct, you would actually need a stronger spring to regain more  granularity in your drag adjustment. The goal being to have the spring less  compressed in your working drag range, and therefore traveling farther to add the same amount of clamping load.

Also, IMHO micro–tuning the drag is a bit overrated in terms of usefulness.  Maybe a smoother, but less fine-tunable drag is still an upgrade? It is often more useful  to be able to move from 5 to 10 lbs of drag with a 45 degree turn of the knob than it is to go from 5 to 5.25.

-J

JasonGotaProblem

Shimano with their annoying retainer spring design is to my knowledge the only company whose spinners care about stack height. This leads me to respectfully wonder if you're 100,000% sure you got the right drag kit for your reel. When I cut new carbons for my old spheros I discovered very quickly that too thick of washers did in fact limit my drag range substantially. Zero to too much in a half a turn sounds similar to my unpleasant experience.
Any machine is a smoke machine if you use it wrong enough.

Fisherman2

Quote from: jurelometer on May 23, 2023, 04:47:25 AMWelcome!

 Not sure how stack height matters as long as the range of drag you want is available.


A couple thing to verify first.

1.  The parts have to be put back in the same order and orientation.  If the drag stack is using belleville spring washers, the cup direction of each affects how quickly the drag ramps up.

2.  It might be worthwhile to make sure that the grease coating on the CF washers is extremely light, so that that extra clamping load is not just to push excess grease around. Running on pure grease as a friction surface decreases the coefficient of friction even more.

Assuming everything was put back together the same:

The adjustability is a function of spring load. The greater the tension, the more clamping load per mm of linear travel (in other words,  degree of revolution of the drag tension knob/lever/ star).  But spring tension does not increase linearly with travel.  The percentage  increase in load per millimeter of linear travel keeps going up as the spring compresses.

The other thing going on: Greasing the drags decreases the coefficient of friction, so you need more clamping load to achieve the same drag. 

My guess is that after greasing, the spring must be compressed closer to its limits to work within the drag range you are interested in.  One degree of knob rotation is adding more clamping load than before. As strange as this may sound, if my guess is correct, you would actually need a stronger spring to regain more  granularity in your drag adjustment. The goal being to have the spring less  compressed in your working drag range, and therefore traveling farther to add the same amount of clamping load.

Also, IMHO micro–tuning the drag is a bit overrated in terms of usefulness.  Maybe a smoother, but less fine-tunable drag is still an upgrade? It is often more useful  to be able to move from 5 to 10 lbs of drag with a 45 degree turn of the knob than it is to go from 5 to 5.25.

-J

Thanks for the information, I'll definitely have a look at the amount of grease I've used.

In terms of tuning, it wasn't really so much me being a nit-picker but just the drag locking down way too easily

Charlie

Fisherman2

Quote from: JasonGotaProblem on May 23, 2023, 05:07:49 AMShimano with their annoying retainer spring design is to my knowledge the only company whose spinners care about stack height. This leads me to respectfully wonder if you're 100,000% sure you got the right drag kit for your reel. When I cut new carbons for my old spheros I discovered very quickly that too thick of washers did in fact limit my drag range substantially. Zero to too much in a half a turn sounds similar to my unpleasant experience.

I definitely am sure they're within dimensional tolerances, I'm starting to think jurelometer is right about the amount of grease used.

That spring system sure is annoying though

alantani

I actually never look at the drag range. I would just pick a drag settings,  dial it up and stay there.

If the drag knob clicks when you turn it, then I would fiddle with it to get a ballpark idea of how the drag increases or decreases with each click. Mostly you would be looking at the increase when you button done the drag knob until it won't turn anymore.
send me an email at alantani@yahoo.com for questions!

Fisherman2

Quote from: alantani on May 23, 2023, 03:25:58 PMI actually never look at the drag range. I would just pick a drag settings,  dial it up and stay there.

If the drag knob clicks when you turn it, then I would fiddle with it to get a ballpark idea of how the drag increases or decreases with each click. Mostly you would be looking at the increase when you button done the drag knob until it won't turn anymore.

Yeah I can understand that for larger reels but when you're chasing larger fish with smaller reels, it becomes more of a burden hahah

Hamachi

Are you using the lighter cals grease? If not, the purple, lighter grease might be more suitable for the drag range your targeting. Lighter drag range wanted? Then I would go back to the stock felt drags and just oil them.
The rail is your friend, no zing pow, on the iron wenches, I like broccoli!

philaroman

#10
IMO, none of the above...  it's Shimano's calibrated knob design
clicks are from a spring-loaded peg popping in/out of divots -- you can't set "between clicks"
(other designs use a ratchet clicking past a leaf-spring -- less precise, but remains infinite)
if you switch a Shimano from compressible felt to hard CF, each click becomes a more drastic change
you loose adjustability, period -- has nothing to do with range
especially noticeable w/ Stradic FG & older (FH & later have more divots)
especially noticeable w/ 1000/2000-size (larger knobs have more divots)
especially noticeable w/ zero-stretch braid; especially noticeable at lower drag settings
if several above factors combine -- can be downright unpleasant to use

HT100 is more "squishy"...  might work better than hard CF

if you also lost range, that's from lowering stack height
knob bottoms out before max drag is reached
just throw an extra eared washer under stack

jurelometer

#11
I don't think the CoF of the drag with  Cal's regular to purple  is going to change noticably because of the viscosity, especially when the drag washers are coated very lightly. It is hard to understand how viscocity is going to have much effect in this situation.

And the stack height being the culprit doesn't line up with the physics.  My guess is that when the stack height is being changed, something else is being changed- for example, if you add a drag surface, you will get more total friction for the same clamping load (it is additive). but this won't make the ramp up become steep, probably the opposite.

To further beat a dead horse :  Sliding friction (which is what the reel drag is producing) is a simple equation: compressive force multiplied by the coefficient of friction.  To change how quickly the drag ramps up as tightened (i.e., as compressive force increases), you have to change the rate that the spring load increases because the coefficient of friction at a given temperature is a constant..  The only way that this is going to happen is if you are using a different range of the spring compression (because you have also changed the CoF with new washer material, or changed the number of drag surfaces).

If dry felt on stainless has a higher CoF than CF on stainless (which it probably does), than you will producing the same amount of friction as greased CF at at lower clamping load, which means that the spring has to compress more to add the same additional drag- i.e., more gradual ramp up to achieve the increase in clamping load with felt vs. greased CF. 

I would wager that stack height is a red herring here.  Until the spring starts compressing, you have no compressive load.  It doesn't matter how many turns it takes for the drag to start engaging.  Stack heightr may effect the range of drag available, but within that range, you either have to change the spring or the washer material to get a change in ramp up.

I haven't tried greasing felt washers myself, but I seem to remember reading here that this made them sticky- might want to double check before trying.

-J

Fisherman2

Thanks for all the replies guys!

I had an idea of totally locking down the drag and just leaving the reel for a while?

My thought process is that it'll weaken the spring to an extent?

jurelometer

Quote from: Fisherman2 on May 25, 2023, 01:12:27 PMThanks for all the replies guys!

I had an idea of totally locking down the drag and just leaving the reel for a while?

My thought process is that it'll weaken the spring to an extent?

First of all, the spring is not going to fatigue very fast from being clamped down. I think it would fatigue faster by compressing and uncompressing repeatedly.  But even this should take a long time.

Secondly, if you were to get the spring to fatigue, I don't think that you will get the results that you are looking for.

  The spring tension range has to match up with the drag range that you are interested in. The spring will have the most travel per pound of clamping load in the lower end of its compression range.  Since you switched to lower CoF washers, you now need more load for the same amount of drag, so the most likely reason for a steep ramp up is that the drag range you are interested in now requires the spring to be closer to being bottomed out.  Making the spring weaker will make this worse.

  As noted previously in this thread, you would probably need a stronger spring to get more travel while tightening the drag.

You might get to liking a very fast ramp up if you fish with it a bit. When I adjust drag springs, it is always to increase ramp up. I try to get under 360 degrees from next to nothing to max.    When the fish is running around, the tension at the fishes end is constantly changing and higher than the tension at the reel.  Fine tuning a drag setting just isn't buying you much.  And it is easier to get in the right ball park with  a 15 degree turn than  trying to remember 3.25 rotations.  Fly reel makers are finally starting to come around on this, as you have to back the drag almost all the way off to strip out the fly line, so you are constantly resetting the drag.

One last thought:

If there is room on the stack, adding in another pair of CF and stainless washers will give you more drag for less clamping load, so this might help a little.


-J

Fisherman2

Quote from: jurelometer on May 25, 2023, 05:16:34 PM
Quote from: Fisherman2 on May 25, 2023, 01:12:27 PMThanks for all the replies guys!

I had an idea of totally locking down the drag and just leaving the reel for a while?

My thought process is that it'll weaken the spring to an extent?

First of all, the spring is not going to fatigue very fast from being clamped down. I think it would fatigue faster by compressing and uncompressing repeatedly.  But even this should take a long time.

Secondly, if you were to get the spring to fatigue, I don't think that you will get the results that you are looking for.

  The spring tension range has to match up with the drag range that you are interested in. The spring will have the most travel per pound of clamping load in the lower end of its compression range.  Since you switched to lower CoF washers, you now need more load for the same amount of drag, so the most likely reason for a steep ramp up is that the drag range you are interested in now requires the spring to be closer to being bottomed out.  Making the spring weaker will make this worse.

  As noted previously in this thread, you would probably need a stronger spring to get more travel while tightening the drag.

You might get to liking a very fast ramp up if you fish with it a bit. When I adjust drag springs, it is always to increase ramp up. I try to get under 360 degrees from next to nothing to max.    When the fish is running around, the tension at the fishes end is constantly changing and higher than the tension at the reel.  Fine tuning a drag setting just isn't buying you much.  And it is easier to get in the right ball park with  a 15 degree turn than  trying to remember 3.25 rotations.  Fly reel makers are finally starting to come around on this, as you have to back the drag almost all the way off to strip out the fly line, so you are constantly resetting the drag.

One last thought:

If there is room on the stack, adding in another pair of CF and stainless washers will give you more drag for less clamping load, so this might help a little.


-J

Very interesting, if I was going to go down the avenue of increasing disk count, I'm not even too sure where I'd find metal drag disks in the right specs (thinner)

Charlie