Well, I started off the New Year by taking all my reels off my rods and set to taking them all apart and cleaning/lubing them. No snow up north meant no snowmobiling so this was my day, which was ok by me anyhow as this is something I've been meaning to do since last month and I might as well do it now rather than waiting since I have to order some parts from Penn to finish the job.

I have had a few of my 6500's for almost 10 years now as I was buying 2 a year until I had all six, and I got the Daiwa Sealine's used and my 2 Boca 40's are new and I had just sent them back as the drag-detents were not working anymore and that meant Warranty so I'll be getting new ones from them, and in all the use I have had for the 6500's, what with guests and family using them, the reels have performed quite well but with some minor degradation in performance. I have noticed that at least two make a lot of noise while reeling in, much more so than the other 4 6500's I've got and I think that while tearing them down yesterday it is the side case that has worn, the part where the bearing fits into has worn, allowing the bearing which the handle/main gear to move a little to one side thus making the noise. I'm going to order 3-4 new side cases, about 6 new bearings, the felt washers for the handles and maybe 3 main gears for the reels as the aluminum part of the main gear has corroded and worn away over the years. I can live with this as the reels have been used and abused and with a few replacement parts they will be good to go again.

Once I clean the insides and it is time for re-lubing, I will be using the Penn reel grease that I bought in a tube, before I would just use some bearing grease or whatever I had around but found that it has been too heavy and impedes on the performance, the Penn stuff, at least so far, is thick and stays put but is still fluid. I'm sure there might be better but for the small cost, at least this time I think I have the right stuff.

I have two Daiwa Sealine conventionals which I hardly use since despite one being a high-speed levelwind, I think the reels are slow but they are good reels. Plus, I hardly troll anymore and if I do, say, for Bonito, my spinning rigs work pretty darned well. Anyhow, if I am going to go deep for the cod/haddock this spring, I'll need them and the 60-80 lb. braid I have on there now to handle the depths and the fish. So I set to breaking them both down which I had not done in a while and didn't really expect to see much in the way of salt-intrusion as I haven't used the reels much but it looked horrible inside, the reels just don't have much in the way of stopping water from going inside them but maybe I'm supposed to break them down more often which I will do now that I broke them down completely and put them back together again. At first, when I took them apart, I didnt' think I'd get them back together again as all the pieces came falling out, but with some patience, there were only 5-6 pieces to get back together and they went back with not much fuss, and all lubed and working nicely to boot.

http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a184/thundra04struck/P1010017.jpg

I wondered why a couple of my 6500 drag clickers were not working, that is the sound it is supposed to make when the drag starts playing out when a fish is on, or some weeds get caught on the lurewhile trolling, but it was just the clicker thing under the spool that was stuck, loosened the screw, a little lube, and viola, drag clicker fixed, good for me, right?
You can see the corrosion on the outside of the main gear in the upper right hand side of the picture.
http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a184/thundra04struck/P1010016.jpg
On the dining room table working on the 2nd Daiwa Sealine. New digicam means more stories from Bassyius Maximus, for better or worse . . .
http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a184/thundra04struck/P1010019.jpg

a man after my own heart,,, I think those copier paper box tops are the best to use when taking a reel apart to clean,,,,

It is good to know that there are others out there. The tinkering, to me, is therapy. My GF remarked that I had sat in my spot for 4 straight hours tinkering with 2 reels and that I was not even really completely done with them. I have to call Penn and get my parts ordered so I can finish and get the things off the dining room table. The copy paper box was pretty darned handy. I keep all kinds of cardboard, the boxes and flattened out large pieces for the garage handy for these sorts of things.

I figured out your problem....You need more Penn 6500s.

:laugha:


Nice work. I tore my abus down on Christmas day

LOL!, more 6500's, yes! Thing is, I have 4 other brother and sisters and a brother in law and then there is Dad and the neice and nephew and other times my buddies and when we all go out bottom fishing, I need at least 6 rod/reel set ups, then when I go out hunting, I need at least 2 rods rigged and ready to toss into the possible blitzes so I like to keep myself covered, don't we all have a rod/reel fetish of some kind?

Those pics are bringin back memories, my penn's are paper weights now (a little on the heavy side for paper weights but)

ya Gotta be f #$%^&*( nuts // either throw them away //or use them til they don,t work :kewl:

These SS's have to be the Chevy small-block V8 of the fishing reel world, they take abuse and with a few parts keep going.

My Dad cracked two of the reel-seats from tilting the outboard motor onto the reels as they were seated in the rodholders in the back of the boat, we have since moved the rodholders to the inboard side of the wave-gate and I bought 2 new reel bodies from Penn, exchanged all the parts and the reels were like new again. The simplicity of the insides and the ready availability of parts makes them easy to work on and going. Granted the reels are heavy and are not as silky smooth as many others, but by darned, they take a licking and keep on ticking, besides from the bail wire breaking, the reels have never let me down on any fish.

Don't pay attention to those high-rollers .... one's got a green thumb and the other has a yellow :bshake:

Those reels are work-horses with easy maintenance ....:heybaby: