Boca OS7 on Core 50/51 - Feedback

[bassninja]

For those of you who have upgraded the spool bearings on your Core 50/51 to Boca Orange Seal Abec 7's, did you feel it was a worthwhile upgrade over the stock S-ARB's? I have an issue where with 1 brake on I don't get the distance that I want, and with 0 brakes on = Re-spooling time.

Also, does flushing out the S-ARB's with nail polish remover and using a lighter oil such as Hedgehog Alchemy Oil increase the performance of said S-ARB's?

[Bootytrain]

I'm interested also... Since the fiasco I had with cleaning the scorpion DC bearings I'm hesitant to do it with the cores bearings

[mrpao]

From my experience with cleaning my stock Core bearings, they turned out great.
I soak them in a container of lighter fluid and use an ultrasonic cleaner. Sometimes I will hold the container on the air pump while it is pressurizing up. That actually works better than the ultrasonic cleaner.
The trick is blowing all the cleaner out of the bearings. After that the stock bearings normally spin like a champ.

I've had bocas and other abec 7 bearings and it seems that once the stock anti rust bearings are cleaned, they work just as good.

[steve1206]

I have one with and one without. Honestly not a huge difference but I also haven't had a reason to test their pitching/casting on the light end. Haven't really gone under 1/4 oz with them. Free spool times are better but real world with medium sized baits, it hasn't really mattered.

[Strewth]

I clean my S-ARB bearings for the Scorpion XT1000 by spinning them on a Dremel in acetone (using Dougl58's idea). Then spin them to get rid of any excess acetone and check for any 'tics' in the bearing. Then oil them with Smith IOS-01 oil (other oils such as YRF are fine too). A couple of minutes of work per bearing and they cast like champions. Very quiet and smooth.

[Afrayedknot]

I have one with and one without. Honestly not a huge difference but I also haven't had a reason to test their pitching/casting on the light end. Haven't really gone under 1/4 oz with them. Free spool times are better but real world with medium sized baits, it hasn't really mattered.

In my experience, flushing bearings and re-oiling does wonders on reels. I have a lew's tournament pro, and when I first bought it I was getting poor distance, and very finicky braking. I couldn't cast a brush hog w/ 1/4 oz even 20 feet! I took it home and flushed/oiled, and I doubled the distance at least. It wasn't nearly as finicky either.

[QUAKEnSHAKE]

One brake cleaned stock bearings one drop REM oil vs 1 brake abec7 no oil with a Fat Ika/Palm Tree I get 30+ feet more with the abec7's.

Shore fishing there a certain structure I couldnt reach til I put in the 7's now throwing past it. There are 2 points on lake between these 2 point is a shallow section that has big Drop-off eah side. This shallow holds many fish and with stock bearing I was left a gap tossing from one point then going to toss back from other point. The abec7 allow me to now have an overlap from these 2 points and have caught quite the extra number of fish that otherwise would be area couldnt reach.
For me adding 30' to a cast opens up a great deal more fishing area around a lake very wothwhile to me. 4 of my 7 largest bass this year were due to the extra length abec7's gave me.

[5poundhooker]

if you clean both OC's and ARB stock the free spool is significantly longer with the ARB's. I tested them to see if there was a big difference. I am not saying they perform better on the water, but in a freespool test the ARB's will win.

[pro reel]

I personally think it's a waste to replace perfectly good stock bearings without a very good and informed reason and without knowing the full potential of your stock bearings to begin with. I'm sure you have all seen hundreds of posts where people swaped thier stock bearings out for a new set of clean and dry premium bearings and used a small drop of oil or none at all and had a huge performance gain. But what does that tell you? Absolutly nothing because you have no idea what the condition of the stock bearings were. They could have been packed with grease for all we know. If you are considering buying upgrade bearings, the very first thing you should do is flush out your stock bearings and see what condition they are in and if they are good, try them out and then decide if you think you can use more expensive bearings.
The trick is learning how to actually flush the bearing to bare metal clean with no reside or particles left inside. I have said it many times before and will say it again. SOAKING will not work. Soaking may loosen or disolve most of the oil or grease in a bearing but it will not flush it out. Using a sonic tank with the bearings in a glass jar of solvent will wok pretty good most of the time. Don't use nail polish remover, it's full of additives. Lighter fliud is good if you just have a few ebarings to do, but it's expensive as sold in small containers. I use coleman campstove fuel and have found it's very effective and safe on all bearings.
Now, even if you use a sonic tank, you can still find that the bearings don't spin free and smooth after several changes of fluid, even though the fluid stays gin clear. Thats because you can have very minute particles that are heavy enough to stay inside the bearing. It's kind of like panning for gold, all the light stuff floats out but the heavy stuff stays in the pan, or in this case in the bearings. What you need to do then is force those particles out with a moving rinse of solvent. One good way is to use a spray can of brake clean. us it outdoors and wear goggles. Press the extension nozzel against the gap around the side or with open arb bearings, just hose them down. Rinse it out good and it will probably now spin forever. One other way that I have been teaching for a long time is to impale the bearing on a tapered wood shaft either in a dremmel or a high spped drill. Then hold the outside of the bearing with your fingers and then spin it at high speed for 30 seconds while holding it submersed in a jar of solvent. the spinning bearing will form a vortex and it will suck solvent thorugh the bearing while the insides of the bearing scrub themselves clean. Do that to any good bearing and then dry with compressed air and then give it a spin. You will now know just how good your stock bearing was and you might decide you don't need anything better.

[bassninja]

I would love to attempt to clean the stock S-ARB bearings. But from what I'm reading, it seems like quite a process to correctly remove all of the stock grease and re-oil them. I assume unshielded Boca OS7 ceramics would be easier to clean and maintain, while still giving you performance that is equal, if not greater than cleaned and oiled S-ARB's.

[Lexy 123]

I personally think it's a waste to replace perfectly good stock bearings without a very good and informed reason and without knowing the full potential of your stock bearings to begin with. I'm sure you have all seen hundreds of posts where people swaped thier stock bearings out for a new set of clean and dry premium bearings and used a small drop of oil or none at all and had a huge performance gain. But what does that tell you? Absolutly nothing because you have no idea what the condition of the stock bearings were. They could have been packed with grease for all we know. If you are considering buying upgrade bearings, the very first thing you should do is flush out your stock bearings and see what condition they are in and if they are good, try them out and then decide if you think you can use more expensive bearings.
The trick is learning how to actually flush the bearing to bare metal clean with no reside or particles left inside. I have said it many times before and will say it again. SOAKING will not work. Soaking may loosen or disolve most of the oil or grease in a bearing but it will not flush it out. Using a sonic tank with the bearings in a glass jar of solvent will wok pretty good most of the time. Don't use nail polish remover, it's full of additives. Lighter fliud is good if you just have a few ebarings to do, but it's expensive as sold in small containers. I use coleman campstove fuel and have found it's very effective and safe on all bearings.
Now, even if you use a sonic tank, you can still find that the bearings don't spin free and smooth after several changes of fluid, even though the fluid stays gin clear. Thats because you can have very minute particles that are heavy enough to stay inside the bearing. It's kind of like panning for gold, all the light stuff floats out but the heavy stuff stays in the pan, or in this case in the bearings. What you need to do then is force those particles out with a moving rinse of solvent. One good way is to use a spray can of brake clean. us it outdoors and wear goggles. Press the extension nozzel against the gap around the side or with open arb bearings, just hose them down. Rinse it out good and it will probably now spin forever. One other way that I have been teaching for a long time is to impale the bearing on a tapered wood shaft either in a dremmel or a high spped drill. Then hold the outside of the bearing with your fingers and then spin it at high speed for 30 seconds while holding it submersed in a jar of solvent. the spinning bearing will form a vortex and it will suck solvent thorugh the bearing while the insides of the bearing scrub themselves clean. Do that to any good bearing and then dry with compressed air and then give it a spin. You will now know just how good your stock bearing was and you might decide you don't need anything better.

x2
Very well said.

[Chode]

I personally think it's a waste to replace perfectly good stock bearings without a very good and informed reason and without knowing the full potential of your stock bearings to begin with. I'm sure you have all seen hundreds of posts where people swaped thier stock bearings out for a new set of clean and dry premium bearings and used a small drop of oil or none at all and had a huge performance gain. But what does that tell you? Absolutly nothing because you have no idea what the condition of the stock bearings were. They could have been packed with grease for all we know. If you are considering buying upgrade bearings, the very first thing you should do is flush out your stock bearings and see what condition they are in and if they are good, try them out and then decide if you think you can use more expensive bearings.
The trick is learning how to actually flush the bearing to bare metal clean with no reside or particles left inside. I have said it many times before and will say it again. SOAKING will not work. Soaking may loosen or disolve most of the oil or grease in a bearing but it will not flush it out. Using a sonic tank with the bearings in a glass jar of solvent will wok pretty good most of the time. Don't use nail polish remover, it's full of additives. Lighter fliud is good if you just have a few ebarings to do, but it's expensive as sold in small containers. I use coleman campstove fuel and have found it's very effective and safe on all bearings.
Now, even if you use a sonic tank, you can still find that the bearings don't spin free and smooth after several changes of fluid, even though the fluid stays gin clear. Thats because you can have very minute particles that are heavy enough to stay inside the bearing. It's kind of like panning for gold, all the light stuff floats out but the heavy stuff stays in the pan, or in this case in the bearings. What you need to do then is force those particles out with a moving rinse of solvent. One good way is to use a spray can of brake clean. us it outdoors and wear goggles. Press the extension nozzel against the gap around the side or with open arb bearings, just hose them down. Rinse it out good and it will probably now spin forever. One other way that I have been teaching for a long time is to impale the bearing on a tapered wood shaft either in a dremmel or a high spped drill. Then hold the outside of the bearing with your fingers and then spin it at high speed for 30 seconds while holding it submersed in a jar of solvent. the spinning bearing will form a vortex and it will suck solvent thorugh the bearing while the insides of the bearing scrub themselves clean. Do that to any good bearing and then dry with compressed air and then give it a spin. You will now know just how good your stock bearing was and you might decide you don't need anything better.

this sounds too complicated...can u do it for me?

[jeb]

I have 2 Core 50's, and I upgraded both to OS7's. I always clean and relube bearings on my reels when new and several times a year after that. So I was comparing apples to apples when I finally switched the stock bearings out to the OS7's. Really did not make much difference, if any, in those reels. Seems the Core line comes with some pretty decent bearings stock. So give them a good cleaning and use a drop of good oil, and you should be good to go.

On my Curado 50E, they made a more noticeable difference.

[the hooligan]

Clean out your stock bearings, or spend the $25 and go with bocas. Or Hawgtech is offering abec 7's for $15 i think.

I recently picked up a nib curado 51e and was really shocked how much of a difference bocas made. Definitely worth the money to me.

[basskeeter1]

From my experience with cleaning my stock Core bearings, they turned out great.
I soak them in a container of lighter fluid and use an ultrasonic cleaner. Sometimes I will hold the container on the air pump while it is pressurizing up. That actually works better than the ultrasonic cleaner.
The trick is blowing all the cleaner out of the bearings. After that the stock bearings normally spin like a champ.

I've had bocas and other abec 7 bearings and it seems that once the stock anti rust bearings are cleaned, they work just as good.

x2

My brother in law has a core 51e with bocas and I have one with stock bearings, needless to say there is really not much of a casting difference between the two. Continue to clean and maintain your stock bearing as described by Mr. Pao and you be fine. IMO, no need for upgraded bearing. There may be a difference in the curados, but the core is fine out of the box.