Alan I would like to congratulate you on a great site ,and since I am new I am unsure if this has been asked before . I just purchased a 103 Luna in near new condition and want to upgrade the drag to carbontex and I thought I may as well do the bearings at the same time. What grade of bearings does Daiwa install as standard , and is it worthwhile using a abec 5 or 7 bearing ?
Hi PB i use ceramics in all my reels they are definately faster than stock and can increase the casting distance substantially, they are however harder to control and need frequent cleaning i remove one side of my bearings for easy cleaning and relubeing i use a drop of rocket fuel tourniment and spin them dry .Stock Diawa bearings are abec 3
i believe that most, if not all of the daiwa bearings are abec5's with a few 7's tossed in. i know there has been a big push for ceramic bearings. for one, the profit margin is huge. my recommendation is to clean out your standard abec 5 bearings, lube them up and then decide if you need any more spin. chances are the answer will be no.....
Thanks for the reply's , Alan the reel has not had much work, it was just the fact I live in Oz and I was wanting to upgrade the drag and I thought I may as well upgrade the bearings at the same time through Smooth Drag. A cheaper option then buying them here. Thanks Again
you know, i was curious so i called daiwa. it was interesting that the guy i spoke to said, well, yes, they are good quality, yes they are expensive, yes, they are corrrosion resistant, but he could not tell me what the abec rating of his own bearings was. very strange. abec 5 is the industry standard, at least according to accurate, okuma and shimano. i'm starting to feel not so sure about daiwa. maybe inhotpursuit is right ....... :-\
There is a good chance you are right Alan my info is a couple of years old and came from a shimano rep,the reason i started using ceramics in the first place was because the stock bearing are so darn expensive the ceramics are allmost 50% cheaper
IMO you will not gain much from upgrading a Luna. I just serviced two that has been severely abused, and the bearings was quite rusty, BUT ONLY THE SHEILDS!, so after removing the sheilds and a quick clean, they where ready for another season. The pinon bearings was dead though, and had to be replaced.
The drag washers in the Luna performs not worse than Carbontex, if clean and greased with Call's Grease.
So unless you are into casting, I would not bother about the bearings, IMO the Luna has a better quality bearings than those you get from many miniature bearing shops. Dont worry about the ABEC numbers too much, worry more about the brand and quality of the bearing itself.
A lot of copy products from China can be found in the different Bearing shops, sold as EZO, SKF, Koyo, INA, Shaffler etc, so the bearing market is really the wild west these days, so buy only from trusted dealers.
The worst bearings you can buy is generally Chinese or Indian manufactured like IBU etc. This is due to a various factors. Often Chinese bearing manufactures has more modern machinery than in Germany etc, but they do not have the appropriate manpower or knowledge in metallurgy, as their industry is very young. Some Chinese produced bearings are of a fine quality, but it's really a jungle out there, so I stick with trusted sources(contrary to some reel manufactures)