Reel Repair by Alan Tani

General Maintenance Tips => General Questions and Trouble Shooting => Topic started by: BigT on July 02, 2010, 12:32:39 AM

Title: bearing sleeve vs shims?
Post by: BigT on July 02, 2010, 12:32:39 AM
G'day Alan,

Apart from the finer control over accurate length, are there other advantages of cutting a bearing sleeve vs shimming the spool bearing cup?

I had an old TLD20 sitting around and the fact that the spool would slow when the reel was tilted right really bugged me. I just happened to have a combination of washers that perfectly fitted to give me zero load/zero end play and overcome the 'over-length sleeve effect' caused by the c-clip on the spool shaft. The reel is spinning beautifully and it overcame the problem perfectly.

Just wondering whether I should still bother cutting a 'backyard' sleeve?


Cheers, BigT
Title: Re: bearing sleeve vs shims?
Post by: alantani on July 02, 2010, 02:55:25 AM
if you can get it a couple of thousanths over, then you don't need to.  i actually use some daiwa washers to shim the spools of the shimano tld 20/30 two speeds.  works great!  alan
Title: Re: bearing sleeve vs shims?
Post by: JGB on July 20, 2010, 09:14:33 AM
BigT,

There is a difference between shimming and sleeving. If you shim you simply change the position of the bearing to the bearing cup machined in the spool. When you sleeve you fix the distance between the  left and right side spool bearings. Sleeving will produce a repaetable spacing between the spool bearings. Shimming produces a repeatable change to bearing to the spool bearing cup. In the case of the TLD's shimming will work fine as long as you never change the belville stack or any spacers in the bellville stack. If you sleeve you can change the bellvile stack and spacing without affecting the spool bearing spacing.

I'm getting confused just trying to explain this :o.

Tip:
If you wish to use sleeves  then I have found that making your sleeves .004" longer than the space between the bearing cups provides optimal free spool without too much end play.

Jim N.
Title: Re: bearing sleeve vs shims?
Post by: BigT on July 20, 2010, 08:48:01 PM
Thanks Alan and Jim.


Jim... that makes perfect sense. I'll use my TLD to have a go at cutting accurate bearing sleeves.


Cheers, BigT
Title: Re: bearing sleeve vs shims?
Post by: alantani on July 21, 2010, 05:39:04 PM
jim and i were talking about this yesterday.  with the loose tolerances on the tld, i doubt that you will notice a difference. since you already have it shimmed, maybe try fishing with it a couple of times and see if it works for you. you might save a little time. alan