Braid causing gear wear?

[LowRange]

This is why all my new high speed reels with be 7:1. That's plenty fast for me.

Me, too. I wonder how many pros who tout higher speed reels actually use them.

Probably all of them. They don't care how long a reel stays smooth. Most of the reels they are using aren't even what I would call smooth out of the box.

[joekaz]

This is why all my new high speed reels with be 7:1. That's plenty fast for me.

I even get sketched out over 7:1 brass gears. I have a couple of 7:2 reels that got very rough soon after I bought them. I replaced the gears and the same thing happened again. I then put 6.2:1 gears in them and they stayed smoother over a longer period of time. After a season I did replace the gears though. 3 different times I ordered a Lews casting reel with 7.5:1 gears and they were rough from the start so I returned them.

[Slazmo]

It's got to be for a couple reasons it's swallowing it's tongue so fast, pitch of gear, depth of gear and retention of grease is what I can think of first and foremost.

The older deep / HEG style gears seem to carry a small pocket of grease at the bottom of the gear valley, whereas MM seems to squeeze out all the grease and whatever stays on is in for a rough dryer ride. I've tried all sorts of greases - Inc some friction modifiers which help but you can still feel it feeling "sandy / gritty" on retrieval.

That 16 Meta I bought recently before lock down was feeling buzzy with its aluminium main MM gear so out she came and in went the spare Curado K 7.#:1 gear and its quietened down considerably - probably not as smooth as the freebie BC200 I recently got for my boy however...

[joekaz]

This is why all my new high speed reels with be 7:1. That's plenty fast for me.

Me, too. I wonder how many pros who tout higher speed reels actually use them.

Probably all of them. They don't care how long a reel stays smooth. Most of the reels they are using aren't even what I would call smooth out of the box.

I have heard some of the pro's "grinder" reels on MLF shows.

[Slazmo]

Really fast retrieve, high drag and lastly the hard hook set which transmits all that shock load via the spools shaft to the pinion to the few gears that are in mesh with the main gear - whilst someone's frantically cranking away against all that load to bring a fish in.

All those forces are pretty high, no wonder why these micro gear teeth don't hold up - if there were no unusual forces on them and you were just casually retrieving line you could assume they would last.

Does anybody else know of micro mesh gears used in any other real world mechanics like gear boxes or other driving gears?

[Kurt L]

The one Lews I had held up well and My Steez A and SV have not had a single issue yet and they are all 8+1 to 1 reels. My Shimano's have not, either did the FK/FB Shimano spinning reels I used to have... That's why I posted up asking about the new Stradic FL smoothness, My older versions are still going strong.

Kurt

[toddmc]

One of the other problems that gives the sensation of a reel with worn gears is a dry/and or worn pinion bearing. The pinion bearing is the culprit of a noisy reel a lot of times. They should have a little bigger balls, but this adds drag to the drivetrain. My Daiwa pinion bearings on their magnesium frame reels have always been a little noisier than their aluminum framed reels. The magnesium may amplify noise a little more. I'm always putting lube on my pinion bearing and pinion gear on magnesium framed reels. It is just good practice. You can use a needle oiler to go in from the spool side when you take off the non-drive side plate to take out the spool to oil the spool bearings. You don't have to take off the drive side side plate to be able to lube the pinion bearing. Check your pinion bearing as a first step before you replace your gears.

[Slazmo]

Check your pinion bearing as a first step before you replace your gears.

Fair call but when new bearings are put in, gears back into mesh (via alignment markings) and everything is sweet gear buzz is certainly different from bearing noise either physically or auditory.

Short of body misalignment or defect in production its hard to end where to look...

I've got a bombed out Curado K DC coming to me soon, it'll be interesting to see what has made it so to the point the guy wants to give it away...

[joekaz]

Most of the time I could tell if I had bad gears because of the constant "buzz" feeling and sound. When I had a bad bearing it was usually more of a thumping or scraping sound.

[Kurt L]

Check your pinion bearing as a first step before you replace your gears.

Fair call but when new bearings are put in, gears back into mesh (via alignment markings) and everything is sweet gear buzz is certainly different from bearing noise either physically or auditory.

Short of body misalignment or defect in production its hard to end where to look...

I've got a bombed out Curado K DC coming to me soon, it'll be interesting to see what has made it so to the point the guy wants to give it away...

Keep us posted on this Curado, I'm curious too, simply because I have a JDM Metanium MGL that was a grinder new, so I sent it to Irvine and they went through it and it helped (made it fishable) and now it has brass gears but is no where near as smooth as it should be, I think it is a frame issue?, I also had a JDM Antaries HG that was crap right out of the box, and a suspected frame misalignment issue? I'm not trying to bang on Shimano as a whole, me being in Alaska their customer service is awesome they have saved me numerous times but the assembly plants must not even spin the handles on the reels before boxing & sending them out the door! I got three mid to high end reels in a row that were just crap and needed to be sorted out by customer service in Irvine before I could use them. This alone has moved me to Daiwa.

Kurt

[Slazmo]

Just a discussion as to cause and effect. No bashing otherwise different words would've been used. Just want to nut it out.

[Bantam1]

OK since I work for Shimano (17 years now), and I work in our repair department (2nd time around for a total of almost 10 years), and I am the tech that repairs Conquest, Antares, CTE, Talica, etc I see lots and lots of reels with MM gearing. In my opinion I do not see reels wearing gears faster than the older reels. It's rare that a see a reel that isn't filthy inside from use. That stuff does get into the gears and does accelerate wear. Hence the reason we suggest annual service. Annually we receive between 25,000-35,000 reels for service and repair. It is a small number compared to what is sold annually. If we break it down by model the numbers are much smaller based on sales for the model.

Many of these reels are hard use reels. Heavy cranking, moving baits, swimbaits, high resistance type stuff. I also see a lot of reels with the cast control knobs tightened too much. This places more load on the reel at all times. The newer reels also have longer handles than our reels of the past. This means more leverage on the gears. More leverage equals more wear to an extent.

We noticed HEG reels gears of the past would feel a little rougher than reels with old gearing of the same usage and time. The reason is its easier to just grind away on fish under a load. It became easier to do this when you have more torque and power of the larger gears, now we have longer handles on top of that.

Typically MM reels are ultra smooth to start with. I feel that it becomes easier to feel normal wear quicker because we take for granted how smooth they are in the beginning. Yes I have seen new reels out of the box that were not as smooth as they should be. We have taken care of those under warranty. Usually a new set of gears takes care of the problem. I think if we had HEG gears in the 8+++ ratios you would see the same amount of wear, probably worse because the pinion gear would be really small and maybe one tooth of the pinion contacting the drive gear.

Lower gear ratio reels tend to have better gear feel over time. It's simply because of the lower gear ratio you get a larger pinion gear to distribute the load across. A reinforced yoke is not needed if it is built correctly from the start and of good material. Then you need good alignment of the gears and the correct cut on both the pinion and yoke to prevent wear.

Grease...there is a fine line of using too much grease. Japan wants lighter rotation, so this means less or lighter grease. Here in the US we are catching more and typically larger fish than those in Japan. This means we need to adjust the grease application. Japan did make a change to Metanium MGL at some point based on input I gave them. They also apply it at the factory slightly differently than we do in our repair department. They feel it provides a better distribution of the grease. 6 of one, half dozen of the other as far as that goes.

QC is very strict no matter what anyone thinks. One of the QC engineers in here in our office every day and has been for over 3 years. They rotate every 3 years or so to relay info to the factories to make adjustments on existing products and to help work out kinks on upcoming products. On some of the reels like Antares and Conquest we are measuring tolerances to .0002" This is for proper gear alignment. The teeth on Antares and Conquest gears are smaller than those on MET and Curado. I see the results from the gear durability testing, drag durability testing, strength testing, etc. The amount of testing that takes place before a product hits the production line is much more intense than you think. There are times where the factory makes mistakes due to drawing mistakes and other issues. They are typically corrected quickly. Much quicker than in years past.

Aluminum gearing. Aluminum tends to be a much harder and more rigid material than brass. The pinion gears used a special brass alloy that was harder to deal with the aluminum. Our regular brass gearing is also an alloy to adjust the hardness. The aluminum does have a surface treatment as well. There are many types of aluminum alloys, some are better for gearing, others are not. In a spinning reel we use cold forged aluminum gears. With a casting reel you cannot forge the gear into shape. It has to be machined. You are left with any issues in the base material or grain pattern. You also get tooling wear. Sometimes a bad set can slip through since the gears are batch tested. The amount of time to inspect every gear would be insane and the cost would go up quite a bit.

The new Metanium has brass gearing. I was a large driving force behind that because of the complaints I read on here, listened to from the public and what we had seen internally. We also replaced a lot of gears on the Core model reels for the same reasons. A half ounce increase in weight for a little better durability seemed like the right decision. The QC engineer and I worked together on the project and did a lot of testing. He pushed the data through to Japan, got the blessing from our product manager and Japan made the change.

Now with all of that being said, if you feel your reel is not up to par send it in. We will gladly take a look at it. If the wear is considered normal there may be a service fee. If the reel is within the one year warranty period send a copy of the receipt and we will take care of it.

Just remember I am not an expert in my field, and I spew nothing but lies to commit criminal acts against the consumer base to allow my employer to use wheel barrows to transfer money to the bank. No matter what I say I am still wrong or lying, or so I have been told in other posts when complaints come up.

[joekaz]

Hey Bantam 1. Thanks for the detailed reply. Do you think braided line causes faster gear wear compared to mono and fluorocarbon line.

[rando]

I think people are more likely to go on internet and post (or focus on) negative experiences.

Because of that we often take outliers as a rule and bash entire line up on that basis.

I am pretty sure that any company that wants to stay profitable needs to investigate all these outliers and determine whether it is truly an outlier or a rule and if it is a rule what are they going to do about it.

Take megabass levante for example.

No one forces anyone to buy anything and stuff that sucks does not sell.

[johnD]

Thanks Bantam !