I have watched endless videos on reel maintenance...my question is where to grease and where to oil...main gear shaft oil or grease...spool shaft oil or grease...seems that some reel tolerances or so close...My Penn 710 comes to mind(main gear shaft)that if I use grease on these the reel is extremely sluggish...I use it sparingly...I grease gears and grooves on shafts as well as metal to metal surfaces...I oil bearings...are some reels just gonna be more sluggish then others? Juan
Depends on the reel. In the grand scheme of bearings and shafts the maximum speeds a fishing reel will ever experience are the very shallow end of the paddling pool, generally speaking. The only ones that ever go anything resembling "fast" are the spool bearings and the line roller bearing on a spinner.
You can definitely feel the resistance grease adds when turning the handle on a lighter-duty reel. Whether this makes a difference to "feel" is probably a game of percentages - if the reel is very light and easy to turn originally, it will be much more noticeable than, say, a big heavy reel that always took some effort to spin.
As a rule of thumb, oil on anything to do with the spool, grease on the rest. The trick is finding a nice slippery grease that stays where you put it without being excessively tacky. I think we're slowly moving away from the use of heavy marine greases on anything other than large game reels.
I usualy oil spool bearings grease all others.
Oil the spool bearings and the spool shaft where it goes through the pinion gear. Everything else gets grease. No grease on the spool shaft or inside the pinion!
The reel I'm using as an example is a Penn 710...which turned slowly compared to my 700...both spin fisher models...the larger reel spins freely after maintenance...the smaller 710 is very stiff...I use Penn Precision Grease...sickier then say the Cals I have...I think I'll redo the spool shaft and main gear shaft(which has a very tight close tolerance) and see if that helps
Spinners are different, I prefer to avoid them but when I do work on one I put light or thined down grease on the internals.
Would silicon grease be a good option...what do you thin it with...oil?
Quote from: bluesnart on January 18, 2024, 01:39:13 AMWould silicon grease be a good option...what do you thin it with...oil?
Silicone based grease is almost impossible to remove. Which sounds great, until the next time you go to service it.
And it's also usually super thick and sticky. Or at least the few I'm familiar with
I grease everything on a spinning reel, including the main bearing, a little on the main shaft and inside the pinion worm gear tube, but I'll add a little synthetic oil to it, too. I prefer the added protection a little grease gives and I don't care if it slows the cranking down a little bit. When the bail is open the line free flows just fine and if you use a high quality synthetic grease like Super Lube and don't pack it full a half dozen cranks will loosen everything up quickly if it's been sitting around for awhile.
Oops, my comment was for a conventional reel, not a spinner!
My first one two Mark.
Well I've got a lot to work with...think about and experiment with...thanks for all the great information...Juan
In conclusion
Disassembled the 710...wiped off grease on spool shaft, replaced with mixture of oil and light cover of Cals Grease...did the same on X wind gear surface...much better...now gonna wax spool add backing and load either mono or braid and FISH...thanks for all your comments they were very helpful
Juan
Grease comes in varying thicknesses. Cal's brown is NLGI 2, which is the most common thickness by far. You can buy thinner greases, NLGI 1 would be a good place to start. As you go down to 0, 00, etc, they become more like really thick oils.
Greases are mostly oil. The magic is in coming up with a formulation that keeps the oil and thickener blended. When greases separate, the oil migrates out, leaving a hardening residue from the thickener. This is how greases fail over time in reels.
While it is popular here, and folks have their favorite recipes, adding oil or solvents to grease is simply a crude DIY attempt to change the thickness, and is unlikely to work as well as simply using the correct grade for the job.
I think that we get away with this approach because as Boon has noted, reels are not very demanding pieces of machinery when it comes to lubricant performance.
Spinning reels put a lot of their mass into motion when winding, including linear/reversing (spool oscillation). We rely on inertia to keep everything smooth when working lures, so too much and/or too thick a grease can be more noticeable in spinning reels.
But with modern braid, all types of reels have become smaller for a given load capacity, so I do agree that there are probably more cases where lighter grease could be appropriate.
Me-I don't use spinners much, And I will take a tiny bit more winding resistance to lengthen the maintenance period. I'd have to dig around to find my NLGI 1. So there is also a bit of personal preference involved.
-J
Simple answer: Grease on things that move slowly or don't move at all; oil on things that move rapidly.
Jurelometer
Can you mention NLG1's by brand...
Akfish
Good guide for the future simplified and direct
Quote from: bluesnart on January 19, 2024, 05:41:51 PMJurelometer
Can you mention NLG1's by brand...
Akfish
Good guide for the future simplified and direct
You can do a NLGI 1 search and many options will pop up, one of which is Super Lube. That's why so many people have switched to it, especially for freshwater, but it is still works great for saltwater, since I rebrought it up and pushed it to the forum's attention a few years back.
Quote from: bluesnart on January 19, 2024, 05:41:51 PMJurelometer
Can you mention NLG1's by brand...
Akfish
Good guide for the future simplified and direct
Most of the manufacturers offer a range of thicknesses. It is a harder to find the thinner grades in consumer sized packaging.
I am a fan of Super Lube. Synthetic, safe for incidental food contact, doesn't separate easily, inexpensive. What's not to love. It is offered in a range of thicknesses, and with a high dropping point temp, and a PTFE additive, the NLGI 2 can be used a drag grease. Super Lube offers the product in oil form without any thickener. It might be worth it to check with them to see if it can be combined with the NLGI 2 for custom thinning in small quantities. Some spinning reel guys are pretty finicky :)
For the old school crowd, I believe that Cal's purple grease is NLGI 1.
-J
Gonna check that out...the Cals idea sounds like a good option...Super Lube in smaller sizes at that thickness is harder to find but I'd like to stay with synthetic...don't want to overthink any of these issues...takes the fun out of it for me if it becomes to technical...thanks you all
Juan
Juan,
Super Lube 3oz tubes are found just about everywhere. Almost every Home Improvement, Hardware Store, etc., even Harbor Freight carries them, as does Amazon & daBay.
Quote from: Midway Tommy on January 20, 2024, 12:47:17 AMJuan,
Super Lube 3oz tubes are found just about everywhere. Almost every Home Improvement, Hardware Store, etc., even Harbor Freight carries them, as does Amazon & daBay.
NLGI 2 Super Lube is easy to find. The NLGI 1 is scarcer, and I think if you want something more than a 6cc syringe, you have to jump up to 14 oz.
Here's one place that I have used:
https://www.zoro.com/super-lube-multipurpose-synthetic-grease-h1-food-grade-nlgi-grade-1-141-oz-411501
$USD 17.50 for 14 oz. I buy from Zoro occasionally- they have free shipping at $50. if I am a bit short on an order, I top off with some PC brand epoxies. Can never have too much epoxy.
One measly ounce of Cal's purple goes for about $9 USD. One ounce too little, 14 oz, too much :)
-J
Just read a post by Alan...discussed the Cals purple grease...he mentions that it's thinner then the tan...another post mentions how it works better on light spinners...the 14oz super lube rated at GNLI 1 is much more then I need...gonna do a little more research...but I'm leaning towards the purple Cal's
Also, I dug around and found a tube of Super Lube I used on my direct drive reels...
Quote from: akfish on January 19, 2024, 01:59:50 AMSimple answer: Grease on things that move slowly or don't move at all; oil on things that move rapidly.
that!!!!!
FYI:
Just got some info from Super Lube. They say that you can mix their oil product with their NLGI 2 grease to thin to your preference. This is a nice option as you don't have to deal with compatibility issues. More on the specific products to combine here:
https://alantani.com/index.php/topic,38018.0.html (https://alantani.com/index.php/topic,38018.0.html)
-J
I agree with this approach and product and in fact have both the lube and the oil...although I've never tried to mix them on purpose...great information juelometer...gonna give this a try...now where did I leave that oil!!!
Juan