Hi Alan!
It's a pleasure to go through your site. I have started to service my reels a couple of years ago thanks to your tutorials and i have learned quite a lot from you. I am a systems engineer but i do some reel repairs for my friends on my spare time and it gives me a small income i use to buy a few reels on eBay.
Here in Argentina the most popular reel is the Ambassadeur 6500, i have convinced most of my friends of the benefits of greased carbon fiber but so far i am not lucky enough trying to make them understand that an open faced bearing will have more chances to survive than a shielded one... but if they rust they will have to drop by my small shop ;D
One of my favorite reels is the old Ambassadeur 6500 c3 dual speed. Did you have the chance to open one of these? What do you think about this auto-shift mechanism?
On the other hand, do you have an opinion on the Abu 7000 series?
Thanks and best regards,
Sebastian
welcome, sebastian! there are several things that i have difficulty with. perhaps it is more mental than anything else. the daiwa sld's fall into that category. the two speed ambasaduers as well. i've worked on several of them and have to relearn every time. i've been able to pull them apart, pice by piece, cut drag washers to fit, and get them back together again. they are not particularly easy to work on. i have been meaning to rewrite the ambassaduer rebuild tutorial for quite sometime now. the new lube make the reel a fantastastic caster. when i come across another two speed, i will do likewise. these reels are not common, but nearly impossible/pointless without the proper drag washers. alan