I picked up a G332 that seemed to be in pretty good condition. This evening I opened it up to give it a good cleaning and noticed the drag spacer is attached to the star. I didn't try and remove it from the star as I'm not sure if it's just stuck from lack of maintenance by the previous owner or if this is part of the design.
Any G332 owners out there care to chime in?
some are just like that..... ;D
Newell made a few and you rarely see them but the graphite spacer and star were molded as one. I personally don't like them and replaced them in a couple of my reels that had them. They just don't feel as smooth to me and if you have any kind of spacing issue with the side plate then you have to put some washers in the Belleville washer area.
One good thing that Sal came up with recently is the Delrin washer on the drag stack. I have had very satisfactory results in my test of using the delrin on top of the drag stack and the Penn 18-505 Belleville. Fits nice and very smooth.
What I did was cut the spacer from the star and polish the cut on the star with a belt sander. Extra brass drag spacers can be found on ebay if you decide to change it out as described.
OK, thanks for clearing that up. That's the first time that I'd seen one like that.
I cleaned everything, greased and lubed, and it all works great! :)
I have a few where the Brass Spacer is molded into the Graphite Star. My favorite is the SS Top Hat where the spacer & bevel are one piece.
Mike