Pre-serviced a new reel

[lifeofRiley]

I just got a new Curado K 200XG that I plan to use for frogs with heavy braid. Slazmo has often mentioned pre-servicing a reel being important and affecting the life of a reel(or at least the important internals). So I decided last night when I couldn't sleep to tear the reel apart. The first thing I ran into is He-Man must have put the handle nut on! I absolutely could not budge it with my trusty 10mm nut driver. I even rounded a few points on the nut in my attempt. So I broke out a ratchet and bore down on it and finally it broke loose. The threads were fine on the nut and drive shaft so all good in the end. As I removed the side plate and looked over the gears everything looked fine, factory lubrication looked very good, not too much, not too little. I did add one drop of oil on each spool bearing which come greased from the factory. I've found no reason to remove the grease, the splash of oil will keep them loose. The other reason for a pre-service mentioned besides checking lubrication was removal of odd bits and flakes of metal or other material left over from the mfg. and assembly process. I saw none of this on the particular reel. I even busted out a magnifying glass. The internals were extremely clean and no service necessary on this one. This reel should be heavy in the rotation this season, so I'll have updates down the line.

Have a good one.

Riley

[Slazmo]

If you were to wash out the parts in a glass jar - you'd see glitter of some form and amount.

Always good to start fresh with anything mechanical, good grease and oil used in critical areas and spots to get nice rotation.

[eklikewhoa]

Always completely flush the whole reel, what they put in there is perfect for shipping/storage as I've bought new old stock reels that were 10+ yrs old but for performance I think it's too much.
Bearings especially!

[lifeofRiley]

The bearings are fine. You don't need to flush them, usually only a drop of oil to loosen them up. In my experience if you acetone a spool bearing dry and only add one drop of oil it could start screaming at you at any random moment. Long casts made with the reel on long rods over and over again you need well lubed bearings. The tackle nerds reel dogma is not always true.