Lexa 400HS Left side plate needs service

[chovychaser]

I took off the left side plate on my Lexa 400.  The magnet holder surrounding the bearing is crumbling into a brown powder.  It needs to be replaced.  It is held in place by the set plate and retaining clips.  I don't see any screws holding the set plate to the side plate.  I think the set plate is just pressed into side plate and I just have to carefully pry the set plate away from the side plate.  Can someone here tell me if I'm correct about removing the set plate or is there a special tool?

[Wompus Cat]

All the schematic shows is item 11 holding item 10 in place .
Since you say it is crumbling I would take a Dental pic or similar tool and just slowly remove the pieces after you take out the Clip .
You may have to remove the outer clip and guts to push the magnet holder out from the outside

[SeaOhh]

Love the Lexas, but this has happened to 3 of mine so far. The Daiwa guys at the ISE show were in complete denial about the issue. I don't use the cast control so I just took the remaining pieces of magnet out and fish on without.

[Donnyboat]

Well thats not good enough, complete denial, we should all contact diawa, and make sure they know what crap they are producing, just not good enough, I relently service a spinning reel, that said 3 ball bearings, the main bearing was a bush bearing not roller bearing, n they try to charge to much money, for there product, cheers Don.

[steelfish]

I took off the left side plate on my Lexa 400.  The magnet holder surrounding the bearing is crumbling into a brown powder.

thats a well-known problem of the lexa reels, they have it on the original lexa and continued to the Lexa HD, they only added a Stainless steel main gear but did nothing to the magnet problem.

[jurelometer]

I think that that brown powder is what used to be the magnets. The rest of the part might be intact.

Neodymium magnets are sintered, and therefore porous, and contain a lot of iron.  Once the protective coating is breached, they  corrode ridiculously fast just from moisture  in the air, and even faster when exposed to saltwater.  That  brown powdery stuff probably accelerates corrosion for metal parts that it comes in contact with, especially steel parts like shafts and bearings.  So if the plastic holder doesn't come off easily, the problem might be corroded metal parts.

Sounds like this part has a reputation for going bad.  You  might want to consider adding  a spare or two to the parts order so that you will have them handy when Daiwa runs out of them.

On the question of this being a defect/design flaw: my vote would be kinda yes and no.  I would put magnetic cast control in the same category as one way bearings - not very durable for saltwater usage, but an included "feature"  because of high customer demand.  We are getting what we ask for, and then not satisfied with the inherent reliability tradeoff.  But there are also better and worse implementations.

The challenge for coating magnets is that magnetic pull decreases over distance by the inverse square rule.  For example, if you move the magnet from 1mm to 2mm away from the target, the distanced is doubled, but the pulling force is quartered.  Slight changes in thickness of the coating can make a huge difference in the effective strength of a magnet.

As a side note: this inverse square rule is why adjustable mag controls tend to ramp up so fast.  If you wanted the effect to ramp up linearly, the magnet has to move increasingly less distance toward the spool with each turn of the adjustment knob. 

OK- now back on track.


The most common coating for neodymium magnets is nickel-copper-nickel plating. Not really sufficient for saltwater protection, but nice and thin.  If the magnets have a shiny silvery appearance, this is what they probably are.  Epoxy coating is the usual coating  for wet environments.  Not too expensive, but a much thicker coating.  There are more expensive high tech coatings used for medical and science, so mebbe one of these would provide a better tradeoff, but at what price?

Finally, the design can also have an effect. Water is always going to get in between the spool lip and sideplate and get flung around by the spool spinning from the cast.  A careful design can minimize trapped water around the magnets, and whether the coatings get scratched, but may not be the best design for controlling the cast.  No free lunch.  Just at a quick glance, the Lexa design does look to be a bit of a water trapper.

Centrifugal brakes do not have magnets, but it is a bit trickier to design a lightweight centrifugal brake that is easily adjusted without popping off the sideplate.  No free lunch.  As for the competition, the  Okuma Komodo uses a centrifugal brake, not sure what Shimano Tranx or Abu Revo use. 

Performance wise, not sure how much advantage magnetic has or does not have over centrifugal.  I mostly turn the cast control down and use my thumb, so I can't offer much here, other than to note I would be more reluctant to buy a reel with a mag brake for saltwater use, but I am definitely in the minority on this.

-J

[ReelClean]

Best solution I have been able to come up with when presented with these crumbling magnets is to scratch away the exfoliated material and soak them with Corrosion-X.  Hopefully enough penetrates the ferrous material to slow the degradation.

[Dominick]

Hey don't ask Dave (jurelometer) for the time. He'll answer by telling you how to make a watch.     Dominick

[jurelometer]

Hey don't ask Dave (jurelometer) for the time. He'll answer by telling you how to make a watch.    Dominick

Sorry if I exceeded your attention span...   

-J

[Dominick]

Hey don't ask Dave (jurelometer) for the time. He'll answer by telling you how to make a watch.    Dominick

Sorry if I exceeded your attention span...   

-J

      Dominick