Penn International Lever Drag

[AlohaDan]

Aloha Alan.

Waded my way through your rebuild.

Here are a couple of shots (sorry my camera not as good as yours).

The first shows salt accumulation on the back of the drag washer. The pic is poor. Alot more salt than it looks.



The "ball bearing" (key #55) was frozen! The second pic shows the remains of the "ball bearing" after trying to pull it off with a pair of vic grips

The inner race wouldn't budge however.

Finally got it to move prying against the spring.

Got the next bearing out (key #55b) intact with no problem. Also the left & right side plate bearings, although I had to put the left back in sans shield.
 
Some questions:


1, BUT Alan how did you get the last shaft bearing(#55c) out? It's way down there at the end of the shaft. How come you didn't have to remove the spool gear click rachet #66 first?

2. Any more hints on the "stayed tuned" comment?

I'm pretty close to getting this one fixed (I think. )

[AlohaDan]

Well I certainly screwed up the Topic. Should have been Penn International 975

[alantani]

uggghhhhh!!!!!!!!!!  i know the bearing you're talking about.  it's deep in the spool.  what i've done in the past is to take the spool shaft, slide it all the way down and wiggle the bearing out.  i've also tried digging at it with that small bearing puller that i made.



look again and you will notice something unique about the penn 975.  the spool shaft is actually two pieces, not one.  it's not one shaft that goes end to end.  personally, i think a great modification for this reel would be to drill a hole straight through this thing and use a longer one piece shaft.  i think maybe an engineer got a little too fancy for his own good. 

[dylan]

Hey,
I had this same problem -- bearings rusted in the spool of the 975, couldn't pull them out.  I set up jig to pull "squarely" on the spindle and the spindle broke.   

The other end (clicker side) of the spool shaft is just a press fit - and static to the spool, not rotating.  remove the plastic clicker stuff (take a picture first so you can put it back together!), hold the spool w/ one hand, grab the square end w/ a wrench, and twist.  now that it's "loose", you can pull it out w/ a good pair of pliers and some effort.  be careful not to scuff up the end of the shaft. 

now you can use a dowel or something and tap out the stuck bearings, rather than pulling.   

NOTE -- i haven't put this reel back together.  waiting for parts.