Reel Repair by Alan Tani

oc1 · July 11, 2020, 10:32:25 PM

I have been looking for one of these that was affordable. ABU Eon from about 2001. They have some unique features including planetary gears, a drag knob instead of a star and an innovative centrifugal cast control system.

That little black knob under the head plate turns the clicker off and on. Twist off the tail plate for quick take-apart and to expose the centrifugal brake shoes.

It has a spool axel instead of a spool shaft. ABU did this on some of their round reels as well. I like the idea of it, but am not sure it makes a huge difference in performance.

Note that the brake shoes swing outward to contact a circular plate instead of contacting a race. The red ring is rotated by hand to allow more or fewer shoes to swing out. The screw with the ABU logo in the center of the handle is screwed in or out to adjust the distance from the shoes to the plate and fine tune the amount of pressure they exert. With the centrifugal shoes restrained the reel has beaucoup freespool time.

Once that fine adjustment brake screw and the handle are removed, the head plate is twisted off and a circ-clip is pried out. I say head plate, but it is really just a plastic cowling with no structural use. It snaps off and on and relies on the elasticity of plastic to make it stay in place.

As you did deeper you can start to see the three planetary gears. The black shaft the handle is attached to is the main gear that turns all three planetary gears at once. Each planetary gear rides on a ball bearing. The three planetary gears all turn the pinion at once. I think this is supposed to provide more uniform and firm contact to make the pinion run smoother. All the load is not being applied from one side like with a normal main and pinion gear set.

There are a bunch of drag washers. This plastic washers plus the metal stuff. I don't know how you could replace the plastic washers with carbon fiber without having to leave some stuff out to make them all fit. It seems very smooth though so replacement is not necessary.

I forgot to photograph the clutch and thumb bar release. It is very similar to the thumb bar and clutch on Shimanos of that time. Posts on the side of the thumb bar ride on plastic inserts in the frame and trip the clutch. The clutch is a plastic yoke and metal jack. Nothing out of the ordinary except that the springs don't fall off when the reel is turned sideways.

I'd go back and photograph the clutch but, to tell you the truth, this is not an easy reel to work on. It took a lot of fiddling to compress the drag stack and to get the bridge cup to finally snap back in place.

I like the looks of it with the flat colors. Unlike most modern low-profile reels, they made no attempt to disguise the fact that the side plates are not metal. The frame is magnesium powder coated with the same flat grey color as the plastic parts.

It has about 6:1 gear ratio and 4 ipt. I guess it is about a 200 size reel. I pulled off 140 yards of 20-25 pound Berkley Fireline plus a Dacron backing. The size is a little too large for my needs. It palms OK for a reel this size but the diameter is almost the same as an old 5000 and it is wider than a 5000.

With all the bearings and gears it is probably a high maintenance reel. I hate reel maintenance and am not sure how many times it can be disassembled and put back together before things wear out.

It was largely designed from scratch and must have provided employment for some Swedish engineers for a few years. Later EON versions had exposed carbon fiber fabric highlights for cosmetics. It seems like ABU was trying to do something earth shattering but instead it just came out weird and unique. It was not a roaring success and had disappeared from the Ambassadeur line-up in a few years.

-steve

Robert Janssen · July 12, 2020, 10:21:09 PM

Are there supposed to be pictures attached to this post?

Yeah, i am sort of an EON fan. I have a couple of them. Some truly brilliant, inspired thinking there; some of it perhaps not so much. It is somewhat of an enigma. It was perhaps ahead of its time, perhaps misunderstood, or perhaps half-baked.

There were a few different models... the EON, the EON Pro and the PGS. The EON Pro was the carbon fiber one, and substantially more expensive. It also featured a novel spool bearing arrangement developed together with SKF, that let the spool spin like, forever.

The PGS was sort of a the-last-of-its-kind-last-ditch-effort-thing.

The regular EON was available in from 3xxx to 6xxx sizes in both left and right hand drive.

You mentioned the drag washers.... i have made carbon washers for these. I think i used 0.5 mm Carbontex. It worked just fine.

.

oc1 · July 13, 2020, 07:43:33 AM

Robert Janssen · July 13, 2020, 09:14:58 AM

Here is another view of the Pro 3600.

Porn for drag nerds.

Tiddlerbasher · July 13, 2020, 10:18:07 AM

And it's invisible

Swami805 · July 13, 2020, 10:51:07 AM

I see the links but no pictures in your original post Steve.
I read a review on tackletours, interesting reel, that's for sure.

oc1 · July 13, 2020, 12:13:58 PM

Quote from: Swami805 on July 13, 2020, 10:51:07 AM
I see the links but no pictures in your original post Steve.

I can see them on several different machines and can't figure out what's going on.
-s

nelz · July 13, 2020, 04:55:13 PM

Steve, I can't see the pics either. I tried a work-around and it produced this message:

"Firefox detected a potential security threat and did not continue to www.raingarden.us. If you visit this site, attackers could try to steal information like your passwords, emails, or credit card details.

What can you do about it?

The issue is most likely with the website, and there is nothing you can do to resolve it. You can notify the website's administrator about the problem."

oc1 · July 13, 2020, 06:44:11 PM

Quote from: nelz on July 13, 2020, 04:55:13 PM

The issue is most likely with the website, and there is nothing you can do to resolve it. You can notify the website's administrator about the problem."[/i][/color]

Yeah, that's the problem because I'm the web site administrator and I have no idea.
-steve

nelz · July 13, 2020, 08:03:23 PM

Forgot to mention, the separate links you posted work just fine and they're going to the same exact address. Go figure.

steelfish · July 13, 2020, 11:58:15 PM

really interesting reel, thanks for showing it up Steve, let us know how it works

Ron Jones · July 14, 2020, 01:56:05 AM

That is a cool drag system. I've been thinking lately that if you replaced a lever with a star that still cammed the drag plates together, I'd like the reels a lot more.
The Man