Gladding South Bend 820

[Gfish]

Ok, Nemo, here's what I have so far. My line roller didn't spin either. The lock washer has to go and the nut has to bottom-out when tight, BEFORE it pushes against the bail arm. This can only happen with an acorn nut that has a closed end and is very shallow. There isn't enough room there once the stock nut  is tighten'd down, until it runs out of thread. It squeezes the line roller.

Solution might be to grind down the open end of an acorn nut, until it will almost torque down on the bail arm when tightened all the way, but not quite.

[Gfish]

Here's an acorn nut that might work. The threads are right, but I haveta grind about 2mm+or-, and see.

[Catching Nemo]

Thanks GFish. Yep on all my my similar type South Bends, tightening down that bail nut squeezes the bail arm against the line roller. Result = no rolling.

One would think that their reel designers back then would have fixed this flaw, but no. I'm left with manually rotating my line roller every few months to change its position, if or when a groove starts to form in one part of the metal.

I will say that the 725A performed nicely last month. I slapped it on a light spinning rod and landed several 3+ pound rainbow trout. So, it is capable of handling fish that are bigger than panfish. 

[Midway Tommy]

One would think that their reel designers back then would have fixed this flaw, but no.

Pretty standard for the cheaper Asian made reels from that era.

[Gfish]

Update on the modified acorn nut thing. Don't have the skills or tools to make it work. Couldn't hold the nut properly and shaved it too high on one side, too low on the other. Shimmed the inside of the nut, but ended up with the bail wire loose. This might eventually break it while actuating the bail.
The roller turned, though!🤪

[Gfish]

Learning through failure. The reel is mostly metal. But the quality of said metal doesn't seem to be there. 1-friction drag washer-leather. No rotor ball bearing, but a nice sturdy bushing in there. Spool shaft supported at the bottom. Above average spring pressure in the bail system. A good, but not great small spinner. Don't drop it on a rock, though. Strongest part externally seemed to be the AR lever. Pretty strong internally, too.

[happyhooker]

Well, I got my SB 880 cleaned up and replaced the line roller (thanks swede 53 for the help).  Just gotta wait for spring to test things out.  Had a little scraping noise on retrieve; bail flip lever was just grazing the boss on the front of the frame that trips the release.  Tried another washer on top of the pinion gear; helped a little, but ended up taking a file to the both the lever and the boss & she quieted right down.

Frank

[swede 53]

  Frank,glad the part worked out and you got the 880 ready to go,looks like spring is going to be a way's off yet in our part of the country.