I think that is what it is called, the drag material on some of my Shimano Calais reels... How does this compare to the carbon fiber drag disc? I was under the immpression it was the best, but that was also 15 or 20 years ago for these reels. Anyway, I recall they bragged about the dartanium drags, best ever....
What is the truth?
Carbontex is better, also Dartanium drag washers are very fragile and break easily. They never were very great. Just Google "dartanium drag vs carbontex".
Like a turd to a diamond. Dartanium II is CF and good.
works best with Athosium, Porthosium and Aramisium
I had a Shimano TLD 15. It had an off-white Dartanium drag washer. Flipped my yak and bathed the reel for about 1/2 hr. Cleaned it out, but the drag never worked right and started to shred. Looked like some kinda canvas material. Cool name though.
If Dartanium11 is carbon fiber, it's prolly good stuff.
The white material was not Dartanium. Dartanium II is far better than felt or Dartanium.
Dartanium mk1 pits and discolors brass main gears horribly when salt water gets mixed in, I reckon it must be high in graphite and several other reactive elements.
I change them out as a matter of course.
cheers
Steve
And it leaved black crud everywhere.
In my opinion Dartanium was only good for one large fish.
The old Dartanium washers were often referred to as Craptanium! Dartanium II are woven carbon fiber and are fine. My old Calcutta's and Curados now have greased Carbontex.
I thought dartanium was one of the 3 Musketeers
Quote from: Swami805 on June 03, 2023, 02:11:39 AMI thought dartanium was one of the 3 Musketeers
He was the 5th one that we don't talk about.
The one that was light in his loafers.
thanks for the info guys. I will upgrade the drag disc next time I open the reels up for maintenance/lube
Dartanium got sticky.
Ive got 4 Calais 200-mg and 1 calais 201-5 that I will upgrade to carbontex disc. A couple of them do have sticky drags, but the others work ok. One has a cracked dartanium drag disc, it is one of the 2 that is sticky. I maintained these reels very well and they are all still very smooth and perform great, except for the drag on a couple. Thanks for the info.
as an experiment, on one of them I plan to lube the drag disc with Tef-Gel instead of Cal's tan. I have a suspicion it will be even smoother. My only worry is if there will be enough drag resistance available using Tef-gel.
Re Tef-gel, the way that I see it: For a less jumpy drag, what you are looking for is the smallest difference in static (from dead stop) and kinetic (in motion) coefficients of friction. A higher overall coefficient of friction number (less smooth) is actually better as it requires less clamping force for the same amount of drag, which will also tend to make the drag less jumpy, and put less load on the components.
Applying Cal's causes the grease to become the main friction surface resulting in a lower overall Coefficient of friction. This is probably why manufacturers were initially reluctant to use Cal's or similar products. But this grease keeps the two coefficient of friction much closer together, especially when exposed to contaminants, making the trade off worthwhile to folk here, and eventually to most of the saltwater reel brands.
Tef-gel is an anti-seize product. It has a lot of Teflon in it, and some sort of goo to hold the Teflon in place. It supports fairly high operational temperature (280c). So far so good. But it is not primarily designed to protect constantly rotating/sliding surfaces under pressure, as machinery grease products are. It I designed to fill voids without hardening and to prevent galling when tightening threads. I suspect that it is thicker than the NLGI 2 grade drag greases, and may not temporarily liquify under pressure the same way that machinery greases do. Or something like that.
I am curious. Let us know how it works.
-J
That makes sense. I will try it out soon and report back. There is a high end custom reel maker "usa made" that uses tef-gel on their drags. I forget their name though. They make larger, very fine, high grade reels. I wish they would make some bass fishing size/type reels. Probably good for my wallet that they don't though.