Penn 209 Drag Modification

[M105580]

I have an old Penn 209 I enjoy salmon trolling with, and it's time for some well deserved maintenance and upgrades.

I put in carbon drag washers a few years ago. Now I want to modify the drag so the application is more gradual over the entire range of star travel. Right now, it is not quite one full turn of the star to go from zero drag to locked up. And the drag curve really ramps up at the end.

Is there a way to modify the drag stack, or the spacer, to make the drag curve more gradual from like 2-5 pounds of drag?

I feel like additional wavy washers in the stack, or under the spacer, would achieve what I want. But I would appreciate feedback.

[Squidder Bidder]

I think this is the point of the ss fine thread gear sleeves with matching drag stars - a more gradual ramp up in drag pressure with the turn of the star. You might also want to invest in Bryan's ultimate upgrade drag stacks if you're going this route.

[M105580]

What are these fine thread gear sleeves you speak of? That would seem to do the trick. But I feel like a few bellvilles ()() under a shorter sleeve might also suffice.

Anyways, to answer my own question I saw that mystic parts has the stainless gear sleeves that are fine threaded.

[Brewcrafter]

Keep in mind that probably the main driver of The Boss swapping out to a SS gear sleeve (fine or course thread) is that you gain resistance to "rounding off" the squared up end of the sleeve where the handle is affixed as opposed to the stock brass part - this is a notorious "weak spot".  Also I might be overstating the obvious but with your CF drags, they have been lightly greased with a quality lubricant like Cal's, right?  Allows even startup and overall smoother drag, and may help with that sharp "ramp up" that you are seeing at the end of the drag range.  Sounds like you are on the right track with this old reel. - john

[M105580]

So I actually have two of these, and just tore them both down to clean them up before ordering parts.

The older one has a metal idler gear, so I imagine it's pretty old. But it needs new drags and is missing the washer beneath the main gear. I'm not sure what the drag washers are made of, but they are pretty thin and flexible.

The newer reel has carbon drags and stainless washers. I cleaned them well and applied cals grease.

 The star has five prongs on it. From fully backed off to drag locked, you rotate 4/5 of a revolution. In the final 1/5 turn, you go from under 2 lbs of drag to over 10.

[alantani]

i don't suppose that there is any chance that you are in the san jose area.....

[Keta]

 Replacing the wavy washer with a Bellville  washer will help a little.

[M105580]

i don't suppose that there is any chance that you are in the san jose area.....

Hi Alan, I'm actually up in Anacortes, WA.

I made pretty quick work of my TLD 25s with the kits you just sent me, and serviced my two Avets with your tutorials. So figured I'd keep on working thru reels, and would finally get around to joining this forum...

[alantani]

bo, with star drag reels, they are sort of "set and forget."  it's not as common to have to adjust the drag on the fly, but a big fish like a sturgeon would obviously be an example where you might do that.  the coarse thread gear sleeves and stars will obviously ramp up faster than fine thread, but coarse holds up better with less wear and tear.  i think what would be most helpful is a fresh set of HT-100's inside the main gear that have been liberally greased. 

also helpful would be a carbon fiber drag washer under the main gear.  the single thickness HT-100's like the #6-60's will get worn down quickly. the double thick fiberglass core ht-100's like the #6-113's are too thick and the main gear can get wedged against the side plate.  what i use is a washer from smoothdrag.com. 

hope this helps. 

[Ron Jones]

I am slowly but surely replacing all of my gear sleeves with fine thread, for the reasons you have mentioned. I find that it is better to adjust the drag to little than too much while fighting a fish.

I'm not saying the Boss isn't correct, if he recommends starting with new HT-100s, then that is where I'd start.

The Man

[M105580]

Thanks everyone for the input so far. I think Alan has a very good point in starting with a rebuild of the drags. This will put things in a known good condition, and then in can make adjustments from there. Realistically, these reels are seventh and eighth in the batting order, and are kept mainly for sentimental reasons. So not sure the stainless gear sleeves will happen.

In the realm of spitballing I would like to see what the drag curve looks like for these reels. Not so much from a turns of the star standpoint, but compression of the drag stack. A graph of force in drag stack vs drag would be useful to see.

Big flick, I feel like you might be able to replace the spacer sleeve with an appropriate compression washer (or stack of Bellevilles) The star has about an eighth of an inch of travel from fully backed off to touching the side plate.

Attached are a couple of photos. I stacked a second sleeve on top of the first, and then manually loaded the drag. Obviously this would be better with a load cell in an Instron machine...

[Ron Jones]

Great,
Have you produced the graph yet?
The Man

[M105580]

No graphs yet. I'm going to rebuild both drags first. But over thanksgiving I should be able to knock it out. I'll probably make a wooden cradle, use a digital scale from Amazon, and put it all in a vise. I also need a drag scale.

But based on what I saw earlier, I had 23 pounds applied to the stack for probably two pounds of drag.

So a spring that develops an 80 pound load over about an eighth of an inch of deflection would be the ticket (roughly). Smalley seems to have a number of springs that would be suitable, although they might need to be stacked.

As an aside, I imagine the original leather drag washers penn used were a little more spongy, which is basically what I'm trying to achieve.

[M105580]

So these three photos explain the genesis of what I'm trying to do here, and where I'd like to end up. While the reels develop smooth fishable drag, the "user interface" with the star could use improvement. There's not enough rotation/travel of the star for my liking at the range of drag where I want to fish (4-6 lbs). I think this is a function of the stiffness of the drag stack, combined with the pitch of the gear sleeve threads.

I would like to develop the curve of drag stack compression vs drag. Once that is known,  I suspect I can find a spring of permissible geometry and load characteristics that I can install, (likely instead of the spacer). McMaster Carr has a number of stacked wave disc springs that appear useful at first glance.

Thanks again to everyone who is providing input and advice.

[jurelometer]

My apologies if you know this stuff already, but sliding friction is a function of the coefficient of friction multiplied by the force pressing the surfaces together.  So you need to get your  drag and metal washer selection and prep plus lube plus undergear setup (which acts a a thrust bearing) squared away first, as this will all effect the coefficient of friction which can change your results dramatically.

As we discussed on another thread recently, spring deflection to load is not linear.  The same thing happens with the threads when tightening a nut (or in this case a star) which is also a spring of sorts,  and the other elastic components that constitute the rest of the drag stack will behave the same way.

So the system will never be linear, the best you can do is increase the amount of rotation required in the clamping load range that you care about. Which can also be done by switching to a sleeve and star with finer threads.

Am curious why a wave spring would be better than stacking bellevilles.  Not much compressive load available in wave spring stack of this diameter.  I would guess that you will have to stack bellevilles to get the load that you are looking for.

And getting to a more impertinent (and unpopular) point, I do not see the benefit in this level of fine tuning of drags (heresey, I know )

As the effective line diameter on the spool changes as line goes in and out, and as the water applies force along and more importantly across the line (due to current, boat drift, fish swimming around etc.) the actual load required to spin the drag is going to constantly be changing quite a bit -especially from the fishes end of the line.  That is why the rule of thumb drag settings are generally in the 1/4 to 1/3 of stated line test.  It seems somewhat futile to me to tune the stack so that I can choose to set the drag either at 4 or 4.2 lbs, for example.  That difference turns out to be "noise" with everything else going on.

I am with Alan in terms of focusing on getting a smooth drag setup and minimizing the difference between static and dynamic coefficient of friction.  Drag lube, carbon fiber washers, flattened smooth metal washers, undergear setup, etc.  All that boring stuff.

Hope this helps,
-J