5500C

[yedneck]

Hi everyone.  I have an older ambassadeur 5500c ('85), and it's been sitting the last few years.  Recently, my buddy told me there's ways to 'hot rod' the reels.  I've looked around alittle, and have a general understanding, but I have no idea where to start, what size bearings, etc.  Sorry if this has been covered, just looking for a place to start.  Thanks

Dan

[Tile]

The first job is to replace the stock drag washers with Carbontex ones and treat them with Cal's grease. The spool bearings can be changed with better ones from Boca Bearings.

[yedneck]

Good news, I do 90% of the work on my own reels.  I already have some Cals grease, and big tube of Yamaha marine grease.  I guess my big question is how do I know what size bearings?  I've read other topics on different sites where guys upgrade spools, or replace them with a newer C3 spool(?). I'm kinda jumping head first into this.  Sorry for all the seemingly stupid questions.

[akfish]

You don't really have to measure your bearings: Go to the Smooth Drag site and you'll find a listing for bearings by reel; they've also got the carbon fiber drag washers you want.

[Ken_D]

Hi everyone.  I have an older ambassadeur 5500c ('85), and it's been sitting the last few years.  Recently, my buddy told me there's ways to 'hot rod' the reels.  I've looked around alittle, and have a general understanding, but I have no idea where to start, what size bearings, etc.  Sorry if this has been covered, just looking for a place to start.  Thanks

Dan

Hello....I suspect your 85'er is a solid axle jobbie, with the bearings in pockets in the side plates. They are 3 x 10 x 4, in millimeters.  Available most everywhere from 79 cents each to 50.00 each.  3 popular vendors are VXB, Boca, and as keta indicated, SmoothDrag.

[KYwoodsman]

Hey there yedneck, welcome to the best abu garcia ambassadeur upgrade website on the planet! Spend some time reading this website and you will have a 100 times better understanding of the inner workings of abu's and how to upgrade them. I myself have been working on my own reels and taking them apart to clean and lube them since I was a young teen but have just in the last year started "hotrodding" some of my reels at 36 years old. This website has been a huge help to me. Good luck to you and since you are already used to working on reels it shouldn't be to hard for you to pick up at all. Just be prepared for the addiction to get worse and worse the farther you go along, lol.