Hi all. I can sum this up as the most successful failure I have ever attempted. Here is what I did. (Sorry, no pictures).
The reel I worked on is a BX2-500.
The tubing that fit the reel is: K&S engineering stock #130, 7/32 X .014 brass tubing.
The first thing I did was a spin test to see how long my reel would freespool. I tried to put the same amount of energy into the spool with each spin. I got 12 to 15 seconds of freespool before breaking down the reel.
The next steep was to go to a lathe and cut two aluminum plugs of the correct dimensions to fit into the spool bearing pockets and stick out beyond the spool rims. I measured across the plugs, and then subtracted the length of the two plugs. This gave me a pocket bottom to pocket bottom length of 1.1425 inches for my particular reel.
I went back to the lathe and cut the tubing, shooting for a length .002 inches bigger then the 1.1425 dimension. I nailed it the first time (brag, brag). ;)
I removed the side plates off the bearings and cleaned and re-oiled them with some lite oil from AVET. I re-assembled the reel with the sleeve and did another spin test. I got an excellent time of 52 seconds. The sleeve worked as advertised. However, I now experienced a pronounced grinding feel to the reel that I suspect is each ball bearing freefalling and going clunk as it comes over the top at the 12 o'clock position of the races.
To have a precision instrument like an Accurate reel have that kind of feeling is just unacceptable to me. So I removed the sleeve, did another spin test and got a very smooth 35 seconds.
To me, more then doubling my freespool time to 35 seconds, aint bad. So I will live with that.
If any of you have experienced this and found an answer to it, I would love to hear about it. And to anyone who is considering sleeving their Accurate, it does work. I just couldn't live with the funny feel. Am I just being some kind of goofy here?
Tight lines all.
Pelagic Playtime.
any possibility that you got metal filings into the bearings? i've done that before.........
I don't think so Alan. I did all my machining at a buddys house and the bearings were lift at home. And I took care to see to it that the bearing pockets were clean so the aluminum plugs would bottom out so I would get an accurate measurement.
Playing with the spool, if I turned it on it's end, the grinding feeling would go away. But held in the horizontal, the feeling would come back. All this while holding pressure on the springs. And like I said, when I took the sleeve out, the bearings ran real smooth.
So the only thing I can figure, either without the sleeve, or with it and the spool turned up on end, all the bearings were in constant contact with some surface inside the bearings. But held in the horizontal, there is enough freedom to allow one or more bearings to rattle around somewhere as they travel around the races, giving a feeling similar to a grinding feeling.
While the spool is truned right side up, I could spin the spool and watch the inner race of the bearing and it wasn't turning so I don't think that the sleeve is turning around the spool axle.
I am thinking of taking off .002 inches more off the sleeve and see if that changes anything.
How do you rate 35 seconds of freespool?
Pelagic Playtime.
35 seconds is going to be longer than any cast that i could ever make!!!!! so you turn the spool downwards and it makes a grinding noise? it means the lower bearing is getting leaned on and it's the one that is bad. that's actually how i check them.!
No Alan. It's when I hold the reel level that I get it.
I'm not done with this thing yet. I'll let you know what happens.
Pelagic Playtime.
Hi all. O.K. I continued to experiment with my sleeve tube by putting it into a drill chuck and using a honing stone to adjust it's length. I was shooting for taking off .0005 inches at a time then putting it into the spool assembly and spinning it to check for that grinding feeling.
When the sleeve tube got down to 1.1390 inches the grinding feeling stopped so I put the reel back together and gave it the spin test. After a few spins, I settled on 106 seconds. :o That's right, 106 seconds. :o :o It just kept going and going AND GOING! And if that wasn't shocking enough, several times after it stopped spinning it spun backwards as the spool found and settled on it's heavy side, so you know that the bearings are perfectly aligned and free to spin.
Now, the 1.1390 sleeve tube dimension is SMALLER then the 1.1425 bearing pocket bottom to bearing pocket bottom dimension of my spool. Don't ask me why this works but it does, so the lesson here is to experiment with the length of your sleeve until you get the best results.
So, this experiment has turned out far better then I had hoped.
Hay Alan. Are you going to be at the Long Beach Fred Hall Show? If so, tell me where and I'll stop by and say hi.
O.K. On to the next reel.
By the way, can anyone recommend a good tool for taking out horrible backlashes? I mean besides diagonal cutters? ;)
Pelagic Playtime.
Picking out a "professional overrun" >:( - a very, very small crochet hook, a bright light, no interruptions, and a good sake or single malt. ;D
"wind 3 or 4 more turns on,strip the line off with your left thumb on top of the birds nest,comes out easy.just repeat until its all gone,if your right handed, opp; if your a lefty."
Wallace: Huh? Dominick
trying to measure the inside land to land spacing is difficult to do correctly. i have found that if you want to measure and cut a sleeve you will need a caliper that has a 1" long piece added to the micrometer end ( I used a 1" calibration tool held in place with a sleeve) . The caliper needs to be a replaceable anvil type where the anvil can be removed from the end. this is so you can get the spool in and out of the caliper. The rumbling/grinding is the ball side play when the bearing preload it too loose (the balls oscillate side to side in the bearing grooves and also chatter against any groove damage caused by heavy side lodes (high drag settings). You can run loose preloads if you use perfect bearings and ABEC 7 (brand new ABEC 5 will also work ok). So here is the scoop on the setting the bearing preload when sleeving. alow .004" of free play for most bearings some may need .003". If you use less the .002" - .003" the bearing will get quite and you not get the supper free spool just something in between. The reason is that the balls will be held biased to one side of the bearing race and rub slightly on the side of the race. Fine tune for quietness or ultimate freespool.
Jim N.
Ya Jim. I suspected it was something like that. I am repeating this process with my BX2-400 and I am getting the same thing. With the success of my BX2-500 plus seeing the same thing happen with my BX2-400, I think that it is possible to adjust the length of the sleeve to get all the grinding out while still getting a very long freespool. But I think we are talking about adjustments of just 1 or 2 or 3 ten thousandths of an inch at a time. It should be very possible to go too far and have to make a couple of attempts to nail it.
I can see why Accurate doesn't do this as this is not a mass production kind of thing.
Hay Alan, you gonna be at the Long Beach Fred Hall Show? If so, tell me where and I will stop by and say hi. ;D
Pelagic Playtime.
Here is what I use to measure the spools. The anvils pull out from the end. Other brands remove from the inside and do not work for this application.
Note the extension piece.
Jim N.
yes, i get to go to the fred hall show this year. i'll be flying down on wednesday, hanging out all day, staying overnight and then attending part of thursday. i will have to leave by 6pm to catch a late flight back home. i will be hanging out with a buddy, ben ouano, and just cruising around. see you there! alan
Just finished sleeving my BX2-400. This one was much harder. It took me five attempts to get it to freespool as good as my first reel.
I have done two reels now and what I have learned is that to get that rattling grinding feeling out, the tolerance of your sleeve length is god-offal tight. Just one half of one thousandth of an inch and you can go too far and loose the great freespool that you just had.
So, what can you live with. Cut the sleeve .004 inches over the pocket bottom to pocket bottom length of your spool and give it a try. If you are getting great freespool and can live with the rough feeling, run with it. If not, adjust the length of the sleeve by one half of one thousandth of an inch (.0005) at a time until you get the feeling you like. And be prepared to miss a few times until you get it just right.
I hope my experience with sleeving my Accurate reels helps and encourages others to try it. It's a lot of work, but once you get your first reel just right, you will never be satisfied with an Accurate reel as it comes out of the box.
O.K. On to my last reel.
Pelagic Playtime.
Quote from: Pelagic Playtime on February 07, 2011, 04:02:47 PM
I can see why Accurate doesn't do this as this is not a mass production kind of thing.
Pelagic Playtime.
but accurate is not a mass produced reel. at $500 to $1500 per reel, i think they should be able to get this done. alan
Let's all give them grief about it at the Fred Hall Show. ;D
Pelagic Playtime.
you could get a sleeve that is 5-10 thousanths short, then add shim washers are 1, 2 or 3 thousanths thick until you nail it. not that hard. alan
As a mater of fact, I tried that during one of my attempts. Turns out that Avet puts some small washers on the spool axles of their MX reels that fit the spool axle of my BX2-400 just fine. :D I think my BX2-500 has the same size spool axle also. I had two sizes on hand, a thick and a thin. I don't know what dimensions they are, but the thin one is just a few thousandths.
Check Avet's exploded view drawings for the part numbers.
Pelagic Playtime.
that is funny as hell! i found exactly the same thing. i ordered up a bunch of these thrust washers from mcmaster.com. now i just have to get that table top lathe. alan
I have ordered some tubing to sleeve my BX2 reels, and it should be here in a few days. The measurement you provide for the sleeve length of the BX2-500 was helpful: 1.1390". I too will start at around 1.1425", but figure I will end up pretty close to the 1.1390 you found worked.
Do you have any other sleeve measurements for BX2's. I am specifically interested in 400, 600N and 600? Thanks.
i don't, but jim nomura should. do a search. he is on this board.
Want to share some pictures for dummies like me?
Edgarz - Alan already has a couple of threads up with pictures:
http://alantani.com/index.php?topic=138.0
http://alantani.com/index.php?topic=1199.0
I would also like to share what I learned from Jim Nomura. He sent me these dimensions:
Accurate Sleeve length OD Wall
Platinum TD 50 1.701 13/32" .014" Ream Spool bore
Platinum TD 30 1.607 11/32" .014"
Platinum TD 12 1.469 11/32" .014"
Platinum TD 6 0.88 11/32" .014"
Boss 870 1.15 7/32" .014"
Boss 665 HW 1.672 7/32" .014"
Boss 665 H 1.245 7/32" .014"
Boss 270 0.957 7/32" .014"
Boss 197 0.441 7/32" .014"
Cavalla 15II 1.496
He also said that he sells these sleeves for $8, plus shipping. Unfortunately, he has not done any BX2 reels. So I am on my own for those. I'll post any results I get.
David
P.S. Sorry for the alignment problems. It looks fine on the preview screen.
Spent some time this weekend sleeving some bearings, so I though I would post my results. I used K&S engineering stock #130, 7/32 X .014 brass tubing for all five of my BX2 reels. The final length of the tubing was as follows:
BX2-400 - 0.9565"
BX2-400 - 0.9560"
BX2-500 - 1.1515"
BX2-600N-0.9445"
BX2-600 - 1.2410"
Now for my comments and commentary.
1. I used a lot of the information that Alan has already posted. Very helpful. Since I don't have a drill press, I used my Sato line winder instead. I just mounted the drill in the mounting bracket and pressed a mill bastard file against the brass tube being held in the drill bit. I used a sharpening stone to dress the outside edge of the tube so the filings wouldn't cut me or get in the way. I also dressed the inside edge of the tube using the L-shaped tool pictured here:
http://alantani.com/index.php?topic=1971.0
2. It was a real challenge getting a good starting measurement to cut the tube. I generally ended up just cutting it 1/8" to 3/16" too long and then grinding it down. When you are grinding with a mill bastard file, it takes some time. Especially since I had to keep popping the tube into the reel to make sure I didn't cut off too much.
3. One thing to watch for is the tube cutter bending the tube inward and reducing the inside diameter. What happens then is that the tube won't fit over the spool shaft. If you start out with the tube being too long, your problem is solved because you end up grinding off the part where the ID is too small. However, a couple of times I had to use the L-shaped tool to pull on the inside wall of the tube to stretch the tube wall back out. Surprisingly, it worked.
4. In looking for that perfect fit, a couple of times I filed off too much tube. Bummer! But there is a fix. I found that using the L-shaped tool to stretch out the tube wall also adds a couple of thousands of an inch to the tube length. Who knew?!? So if you only cut off a teeny bit too much, starting tugging on that tube wall and see if you can make the save.
5. After the first tube was done, the rest took about an hour apiece. Not too bad, really.
6. I should comment that for all of these reels I have already removed the spool bearing side shields, cleaned the bearings and lubricated with TSI 301. With that as a starting place, I found that sleeving the bearings increased the spin time for the reels by about a factor of two. For the 600N, the spin time started at a very respectable one minute, and jumped to an amazing 3 minutes. However, my worst performing reel, the 400, started at about 10 seconds and increased to about 20 seconds. The rest were somewhere in between.
So in sum, I'm glad I did it. It didn't take all that long, and the improvement was noticeable. However, I was hoping to get them all over a one-minute spin time, and that didn't happen. If anyone has suggestions on why I didn't get that one minute, I would love to hear it. Thanks.
David
P.S. I found that my tube length did not match the length that Pelagic Playtime posted at the beginning of this thread. I have no explanation. Probably, one of us needs to calibrate our measuring instrument.
Mr. GreenJeans. I received the PM you sent me and sent a reply but I'm not sure if it went through. If it didn't, shoot me another PM.
I think that the reason that your sleeve length for your reel did not match mine is that even precision components have some small plus or minus dimension that differs from part to part so I am not surprised yours turned out different than mine.
As for your 400 that spins for only 20 seconds, you definitely have some problem other than how you did the sleeve work.
And FYI to everyone. I took apart one of my sleeved reels that ran perfectly and when I put it back together, it did not spin as long as it did before I started. I found that I had to take it apart again and again and each time I would flip over the bearings and sleeve so they went in opposite the way they came out until I found the right combination to make it spin right again. The tolerances are so small that it's that touchy.
Pelagic Playtime.
Thanks Mike. Got your PM.
Ok here is the scoop on the bearing grind and variability on sleeving.
first some basic things to consider as this is a trade off:
1. the bearings are not always the best quality (save a buck) and have variable tolerances.
2. They seem to only be concerned in the radial roughness and run out and are not concerned with axial load effects as the bearing are normally preloades axially with the return springs in freespool.
3. Roughness will/can be experienced in bearings that are not axially preloaded as the balls can/will oscillate from side to side and create vibration and noise or the ball cages can chatter. tighter bearing tolerance will improve this.
4. Used bearing (especially those under heavy loads) will experience outer race groove wear or damage that may only show it's self when loaded one way or the other. Flipping bearings will change the characteristics.
5. If you run a 0 play sleeve (sleeve is exactly the same as the land to land spacing) you run the risk of bearing axial run out or misalignment causing the bearing to chatter and/or reduced performance.
6. Under sleeving will pre load the bearings a bit and if alignment is good reduce chatter and show an improvement in performance. But you are at the mercy of spool and shaft temperature variations causing the pre load to increase as your spool heats up when fighting a fish.
7. Over sleeving by .004" allows a slight spool slop and will allow the bearings to self center (if spool is level) and provide good performance. Running the spool non level will cause the down side bearing to contact the outer race edge and may rumble if there is damage there.
8. Over sleeving by more than .007" (empirically derived) will allow the possibility of the bearing to tilt in the bore causing strange noises and poor performance.
9. If the bearings have lots of axial slop you may need to under sleeve to eliminate bearing tilt and/or chattering of the balls in the cages.
The trade off is extreme fine tuning of sleeve tolerances will/can improve performance. This is at the cost of increased sensitivity to contaminants/race damage as a performance killer. Also as you heat your spool up (drag heat or just plain sunshine) it will expand and effectively shorten the effective length of your sleeve.
Over sleeving produce more consistent performance but will/can unmask bearing flaws that show themselves as vibrations/rumbling/noise that use up energy and slow the spool.
Pick your trade offs wisely and have some fun with your gear.
Jim N.
could you mark on the shaft A-b where i have to measure(photo)or on a schematic.i remember alan saying the c clip is to long,along the shaft. sleeves would be different lengths for diff; reels. but measuring a-b would all be the same starting point, wouldnt they??