Reel Repair by Alan Tani

I've come here for help. I am not a reel expert but I've serviced a few dozen spinning and casting reels in my day. Last week I met up with an older man selling off his fishing equipment. His collection was extremely clean and top notch. Boron fly rods etc. I bought two early 90s (1991?) Stradic 2000s from him. They are in exceptional condition with the original spare spools. Took them home and proceeded to open them up. Original clean Shimano grease and not a single indication of anything wrong. When I got them back together I noticed how poorly the rotors are balance. Mid speed retrieve, they shake. I know these are 30+ year old reels, but they have balance weights in the rotors, and they're Stradics... I have attempted to isolate the imbalance by taping various split shot onto the outside of the rotors but that has been fruitless. Is this how these reels are? I am bummed because they are beautiful reels but even $11 IX reels are better balanced than these. Any advice I'd appreciate!

Load the spools with line —- then mount them on a rod —- and see if they are in balance now, or not.

This should take care of any imbalance issues.  Hard to imagine anything else it could be —- but I have been wrong before!

Best, Fred

Check if the rotor nuts are tight. You might have to remove the retainer screw to do so. Also a lot of shimanos have reverse threaded rotor nuts so watch out for that. Usually they'll identify that with an arrow molded into the rotor near the nut.

If they swapped out the line rollers with something different that was modified to fit, the weight might be different which would be felt when turning the handle.

Were they both unbalanced before you opened them up? Are they unbalanced with spool on and off? I've only worked on a couple of small Stradics, and it's been a while, so not a lot to offer.

I didn't notice the imbalance before I brought them home. I was in a hurry and just tested the bail. Retaining nut is tight. Loaded with line and on graphite rods, the imbalance is still quite noticeable at regular mid and higher speed reeling. Both reels are identical. I forgot to mention, they are quick fire. Which I've never seen on a Stradic. I have a feeling this was just poor design on Shimano. I can understand if these reels wee from the 70s and 80s but a fairly modern design with a lead balanced rotor?

Interesting. I'm not 1000% that the early stradics had truly balanced rotors, the added weight might have just been an improvement.

I'm coming to realize that I have no idea when a balanced rotor became a thing. I thought they started showing up in the 90s but I'm clearly no expert.

Obligatory note that an unbalanced rotor isn't something you notice retrieving line. It's something you feel playing with a reel either on your bench or at the tackle shop. I don't wanna say it's purely for marketing, but it kinda seems like it.  That doesn't invalidate your desire for your reels to feel better to you. A lot of what happens on this site is about refinement not necessity. But it's worth remembering.

Didn't the Spinfisher have a counterbalance?

Thanks for the help everyone. Wish I could post pictures or something. I have a feeling the odd shape of the quick fire assembly might be to blame. I'll investigate later

The early Mitchell's(circa 1950's) had 2-screw counterbalance weights on the inside of the rotors. But thought all spinners from the beginning had some type of counterbalance?

Well I removed the quick fire trigger with no improvement. I guess Shimano just didn't balance these well in the design phase.