Daiwa Lexa 400 Issues?

[Donnyboat]

Bottom line is, know good sending a boy out to do a mans job, to heavier gear & to much drag on a small reel, I serviced, one about two weeks ago, the top of the pinion, had disintegrated, but the arb was still working, cheers Don.

[Lunker Larry]

Larry,
Can you post a pic of the driveshaft, ratchet plate, and pawl in position in the gearcase?

[Lunker Larry]

One more if it helps

[xjchad]

It sure looks like the driveshaft rotated backwards and the pawl slipped under the ratchet plate, the ratchet caught the copper finger on top and shoved the pawl under it and into the pinion yoke.

This would indicate a failure of the ARB (I was wrong   ) and also a bad contact point between the contact surface of the pawl and ratchet tooth.  Maybe the punch tooling for the pawl, ratchet, or both was dull and the end surfaces have an angle instead of being perpendicular.  

Does that make sense? Maybe a quick rendering will help?


Does that model have a heavy power handle with no counterbalance?
Maybe the ARB could be slipping on a cast?
A 10 oz. swimbait getting stopped short from a back lash would put a lot of load on that ARB.

[Gfish]

Sounds and looks logical Chad. I remember the ratchet on my non-HD, P-PWR 400, looked thin and yeah, ever so slightly rounded on the edges. Don't recall anything special about the dog. Perhaps they didn't put any effort(or $) into designing something of quality, comparable to the rest of the reel, 'cause it's supposed to be a back-up AR system.

[boon]

These are one of those reels where, just because it says it can make 25lbs of drag, doesn't mean it should be fished out there. I had a 400 and it was spooled with 20lb braid, and was well suited to that kind of fishing. Honestly I wouldn't fish one beyond about 40lb, but each to their own.

[Lunker Larry]

Here's another issue I've seen a number of times. There is a little brass (?) clip on the yoke that gets torn off and jammed up in the reel.

[jurelometer]

Chad may be on the right track,  but the anti reverse system  (AR bearing and  pawl/dog)  will not be connected to the spool when  the reel is in freespool (even  during a backlash).  My guess is that the damage is related to casting, as Chad suspected, but only if the free spool is engaged/disengaged under load.  This could tear up the yoke, and create enough force to overpower the anti-reverse bearing.

  First of all,  muskie are not going to be tearing up reels.  They just don't pull that hard or run that far.  Not disparaging a fine gamefish,  i am just trying to narrow down the issues.  But muskie guys will fish huge plugs, and that can be tough on a levelwind reel. 

Now throw that huge plug at some structure along a shoreline, where muskies like to  hang out.   Oops, cast going to far,  plug is  pulling with  much force to stop by thumbing, so turn the handle to stop the cast.  Or the reel is accidentally going into gear when casting.  Or maybe the caster has a habit of lobbing the plug and turning the handle so that the plug is moving when it hits the water. Or maybe disengaging the free spool when trolling a giant plug, etc., etc.

  The yoke is  at  greatest risk of damage when going in and out of gear.  Once the gears are engaged, the axial thrust from radial load on the helical gears will drive the pinion toward the spool, so the yolk should be entirely out of the picture when in the reel is in gear.  That is why Diawa is (almost) getting away with a nylon yoke, and just needs a small chunk of bearing metal at the rub point.

Regarding the dogs:  on most star drags, the drag holds the pawl (ratchet) in place, so if the problem is the pawl moving, it means that the whole shaft is moving, which should also damage the gears  (which is not happening?).  On the other hand,  dogs that float on a post can flop around and possibly end up under the pawl.  And with silent dogs, it is probably tempting for the designer to assume that the dog ears will hold the dog flat to the pawl. But dog ears are not very sturdy.

From the photos on your reel and John Tuttle's tutorial, it looks to me like the dog ears might be a bit too small for the size of the square gap between the pawl teeth.  If an edge gets caught, the ear is going to get torn up.  By looking at the marks on the dog and ratchet, you can see if the dog itself is getting driven under the ratchet, or  if it is just the ear getting damaged.   If the dog ear gets bent a bit, maybe that is enough for it to start catching during the wind and getting further shredded.  BTW, square pawl teeth allow the same part to be used for right and left hand reels,  but the square gap is more likely to catch a dog ear.

One other note: the photos seem to show that the top of the pawl and dogs are not at the same height, but this may be an optical illusion.

If Chad and my theories are on the right track, then the damage can be avoided by being more diligent about NOT going in and out of free spool under load, which is always hard on a star drag, but is going to be very hard on a lightweight reel working big plugs.

-J

[Three se7ens]

Just looking at whats in this thread, I think the square notches, and the short length of the ears on the silent dog are the real problem hear.  The square notches must look nice from a cost standpoint(interchangeable with left and right hand models), but I think it really degrades the quality of the action.  And the ears are WAY too short, they should always contact a solid part of the gear, even with the dog fully disengaged.

I suspect the problem comes from the ears getting caught in the notches, and tearing up the rest of the system when they get bent.

[CooldadE]

Has anybody fished one of these reels and not had it break ? I have a 400... the one with the lower gears that I haven't even put line on it yet. Should I cut my losses and look for a comparable but better low profile reel ?

Cool

[Swami805]

I got one cheap on sale a couple weeks ago,$114 all in seemed reasonable. Pretty popular reel out here. Hope it works out ok, I'll be using it with a 30lb top shot, thinking it will hold up if not abused.

[MarkT]

I've caught YT, YFT, Wahoo, Skipjack, the 3B's without any issues. Todd (Hardy Boy) used it at Cedros this year, caught a bunch of YT throwing surface iron, and loved it.  It went on my 10 day at the beginning of Oct and is going on my next 10 day in a week and a half. It's full of 50# spectra with a 40# leader. A few years ago on a SoA trip at San Martin, I threw a Tady 45 on the slide then the Captain decided he wasn't ready to stop after all, I hooked up and was told tough, we aren't stopping. I cranked in the 25# YT anyway. The deckhands were impressed!

I have the HD 400hs-p. I had a 300hs-p that never had any issues. I sold it and now have a TranX 300, it's going on the 10 day again this year. I caught YFT on it last year.

[Lunker Larry]

Yes, muskie guys are very hard on reels. I'm in total agreement with your posts that the issue is the large baits, the ratchet gear catching the ears on the pawl and that it is happening on long bomb casts.
I put a shim under the AR pawl on one of these reels and want to see if it makes any difference.

Interesting problems that I have not seen on any other reel.

Great discussion and insightful comments.

LL

[xjchad]

Keep us posted Larry!
It would be cool to see a solution to this!

[Hamachi]

So, with all this concern about the Lexa reel, I thought I'd open mine even though I've hadn't had any problems. I should've taken a picture, but nothing was out of the ordinary except black shrapnel distributed through out the drivetrain. The only place it could have come from is the yoke. Looking at it you can hardly tell anything is wrong, but I'm hoping someone will come up with a solution, Metal yoke maybe?