Reel Repair by Alan Tani

Welcome aboard!

Best, Fred

WOW! That is one gorgeous red reel. Hope to see the finished product soon. Any luck finding a reinforced eccentric jack?

Welcome, from Pasco county FL. It may look like it's mostly cali folks here, but we Floridians sure make a lot of noise too!

Me problem. The sub shaft bearing was on the floor instead of in the reel haha. Well it does fish without the tiny bearing as I caught a 21" gray snapper. Should be much smoother now.

My Baja with 6 bearings is not smooth when retrieving 12oz and bait. Free spool is fine, and handle turns smoothly without a load. I replaced bearing 55b under the handle as it was rough. I checked the other 5 bearings and they feel smooth. However, retrieving under a load is still not smooth. Question 1: Is bearing 55a, on the schematic, the tiny bearing that fits on the sub shaft? Question 2: which bearing, or bearings, would most likely cause this issue? Thanks in advance for helping me.

Greetings from Crystal River Florida,
Welcome to the clan! Great folks here with lots of knowledge!

Just getting back into salt water fishing, picked up a couple jigmasters, have several Penn spinning reels and looking to get a 2 speed/heavier reef fish setup. Found this sight looking into drag conversions/upgrades and well here I am!! Look forward to learning a lot and hopefully contributing along the way.

:0)

This is so good to see on my favorite forum! My daughter (I've spoken about her a few times on this site) is taking her PHD in Marine Biology at Florida and it is this program (Return em' Right) that is paying for her education and employees her. She is doing a lot of the statistics and research on this device. Very cool to see it come around with people I've associated with on the forum. She is one of my favorite humans to fish with and she uses a conventional reel, of course, because that's what she saw me fish with. 

There's a lot of reasons they're popular and, therefore, expensive.  It's a solid reel. It has a high gear ratio and high IPT, but you don't feel it in the start-up when cranking.

I particularly like the frame design.  It provides plenty of support, but you can still get your fingers in there to pick out a backlash. 

It has that set-up where the spool is riding on the spindle, instead of the spindle riding on the side plates.  Side plates can get knocked out of alignment if the reel is bumped/dropped.  But as long as the spindle is straight you get max performance. 

It palms OK, but like other ambassadeurs, it doesn't plam great..  The first thing I did was take the levelwind out of mine and made a low-profile tail plate so it would palm and cast better.

There is something weird about the anti-reverse that I don't like but I'd have to go back into the reel to remember what it is.

Really nice reel.  I'm going to put 12 lb mono on it.  With the leather( I think they're leather)  drags I'm sure it will be fine.  I'll try to post pictures in the future when we go fishing!