Reel Repair by Alan Tani

So I just bought a Piscifun Alijoz 400 (now called the AlinoX) and before I put it into use, I cracked it open to see what needed to be done.....

Here is what I found....

As you can see, the location of the grease (at least they tried?) is essentially non functional.  The main gear is completely dry and the pinion only has grease on the yoke slot, but the gear itself is also dry.  The drag washers have some grease on them, but they are made of some weird material that seems like it is/was "dusty". 

I won't detail everything, but in addition to the grease, the ball bearing don't seem like they were lubricated either, so they got some ReelX.  I'm stripping out all this crappy factory grease and properly lubing it with Penn grease and ReelX.

Good Job!  This is exactly why The Boss has drilled it into our minds that ANY reel (budget, high end, whatever) needs to get a good pre-service right out of the box.  Worst case you just opened a reel and verified all is good and put it back together.  But all too often best case is it gives a opportunity to "optimize" the reel and correct deficiencies such as what you found.  Ultimately, all of our reels are hand assembled, and I suspect in some cases it is just some assembly line worker trying to meet a quota and bang out as many units in the shortest time possible with a minimum of rejects, so it is reasonable to assume that attention to detail isn't going to be at the same level as many of the folks on this site. - john

Yeah, mechanically this reel is sound.  It has plastic in places that I would rather metal, but in general it is good.  Having a backup ratchet for the anti reverse bearing is good.  The drag is good sized, but the material is a bit of a question.  I'm going to get the demensions and see if I can get carbontex from smooth drag or just cut from a sheet.  Certainly worth the $130 I paid for it.

No matter the reel maker, you can't trust the assembler's at the factory.
 I bought an expensive surf-casting spinner with sealing gaskets. Checking it, they did so-so on the grease dispersion, but someone got the body gasket out of alignment and pushed the screw in anyway, almost cutting the gasket in half. They also left the screw pretty loose. Too bad, there was a nice groove all around the gear-box for the gasket to fit into, maybe not an easy feature to build into it?
Got a new gasket for free from the company.

The assemblers probably have either a quota(units/hour?) or get paid for # of reels assembled/shift.

Like my ford tractor mechanic friend says about modern tractors

"What you have there is $20 worth of scrap metal" or in this case plastic...

Quote from: jgp12000 on Today at 08:34:33 PMLike my ford tractor mechanic friend says about modern tractors

"What you have there is $20 worth of scrap metal" or in this case plastic...

The reel is fine. The lube is shite though.

These are pretty good reels. Basically Daiwa and made in the same plant. At least a third of the price of most comparable reels.
I found the same ref lack of grease. Guys have complained about the thumbar sticking and thats usually the cause

Quote from: Lunker Larry on Today at 08:37:16 PMThese are pretty good reels. Basically Daiwa and made in the same plant. At least a third of the price of most comparable reels.
I found the same ref lack of grease. Guys have complained about the thumbar sticking and thats usually the cause

Exactly. The lube on the thumb bar mechanism is lacking.

I have a kast king Zephyr never opened its prolly same way...

Quote from: jgp12000 on Today at 08:54:10 PMI have a kast king Zephyr never opened its prolly same way...

If it's like minde, same deal.