Reel Repair by Alan Tani

I don't eat while I'm fishing, the hunger keeps me sharp, aggressive, and with a predatory mindset.

I pack a sandwich but don't eat until the ride home.

I looks like there are plenty of parts available for your reels. Just not from Diawa.

Mike

I got one from Foaks at a good price. A unique looking reel. Functionally too, with the rotor oscillating instead of the spool. Has a plastic main gear, though, and the AR skips due to damage on the  back side of said gear. Wouldn't trust it to hold or crank against much terminal tackle opposing force, weather the AR is on or off. JMO, but maybe an ok trout/panfish reel.

Welcome to the site!

I just finished reading through this whole thread. This thread is a history lesson and digital/visual museum wrapped into one. Thanks to everyone who has posted so far. It's a very enjoyable read as is this whole website.

Steve

The travel to load ratio on these Belleville spring washers is not linear. As you get closer to flattening out the cupping, you get increasingly greater load for the same amount of travel (degrees of star rotation in this case).  The trick is to keep the springs toward the lower end of their compression range for the drag clamping load range that you prefer to play in.

There are two tools at your disposal:

1.  Strength:  Belleville's come in varying strengths for the same size - with just the thickness changing.  I go to McMaster Carr, as it has load info and lots of choices, but I am sure that there are other suppliers.

2. Orientation:  Nesting the washers -  "((("  or ")))", it doesn't matter -  means less travel to achieve the same clamping load and opposing the washers - ")()()" does the opposite.

Both these options change the height of your washer stack, so you need to take this into consideration.

IMHO, microtuning the drag is a bit overrated.  The load at the fish end can constantly be changing from friction on the water pulling across the line. Any minor change in drag setting is irrelevant. It is still useful to not have the drag bottom out, and not require too many or too few turns in your normal  drag range, but not worth trying to set it up too exactly.  Plus  the ramp up will never be linear, or even close to it unless you have a extremely long handle shaft to accommodate all the required opposing bellevilles

Assuming that you have enough room, it still might be tough to get a 3x range thst ramps faintly  evenly. Maybe a combination of thinner and thicker washers.  I never bothered with going this far, so I don't know how practical this is.


-J

https://alantani.com/index.php/topic,23767.0.html

Festus tore apart an 8300 here.

I always bring coffee and lunch when I go fishing ,love to drink coffee .My friend always piss off while I stop fishing for lunch even when fish are biting good .Don't care much for snack

Fun stuff.

Hi Don,

I am not sure exactly  what you are trying to salvage, and from what kind of rod. I know that you know all this rod construction stuff, but for the sake of clarity, and to help the new folk:


On most rods, the blank goes all the way through to the butt cap.  Metal reel seats and butt caps can be removed and reused.  Since you are not trying to protect the blank, heat is your friend, as jtwil98 noted.  There will usually not be too much epoxy residue if you apply heat from the outside.  The epoxy will stay mostly with the blank.

I use a heat gun. It makes for fast work. The heat is directed right to the metal to epoxy joint, and you don't have to worry about whatever nasty stuff might be off-gassing  into the same oven that you cook your food in, not to mention fumes in your kitchen.  And more than a few of us here can attest to what the spouse thinks about using kitchen appliances for working on mechanical stuff

If you are talking about boat rods where the blank does not go through the reel seat - same idea, but you just have to detach the ferrule that goes over the blank. I don't mess with these rods, but I think that the ferrule needs to be  size matched to the new blank, as these rods are supposed to take a high load.

If you want to remove plastic parts, like the Fuji "graphite" reel seats, I don't think it so worth it.  They will most likely deform or even melt before the epoxy releases from heat, and are inexpensive enough that it is not worth the time to grind out the old blank/epoxy.

-J