Van Staal Reel Servicing Turnaround = 6 Weeks!

[bassmaster]

flaptail im going to rip your head off and %$%$%$%$ down your throat

[JohnR]

[bassmaster]

[Flaptail]

[NIB]

So a 5000 goes 795 an a spare gt spool goes 146 for total of 941 plus shipping.I think I'm gonna go back to usin a clorox bottle an a handline.

[BCY]

The weight on my Saltiga 6000 GT fully spooled with 65 # whiplash and 15 # mono backing is 30.4 ounces. I didn't measure the amount of line but I would estimate at least 250 + yards. I'm going to do some test casting so thats the most important result to me. Hopefully I can hit the 130 yard mark with a 5 oz jig. Need to hit that seam out in the middle of that rip.

[Pete_G]

The thing with Van Staal is that THEY hate the service plan too.

I've been to the old Hopedale facility during reel repair season, and it's not pretty. There were hundreds and hundreds of bins on racks with completely dissassembled reels in them and a huge (5ft tall, maybe higher) pile of un-opened cardboard boxes with MORE reels back for service in them. Also, when they tell you they completely disassemble them they're not BS'ing you.

You can take apart a VS quickly, but to thoroughly clean, inspect the parts, reassemble it, and then box and ship the reel takes time. I'm not saying 6+ week turnaround is ok, just that there is a reason.

Also, (not counting 2 specific instances) add me to the list of people who have never actually seen a broken VS. One time a customer came in with a reel he ran over with his truck, and the other was with the Ironman's now 11+ year old VS100. A couple years ago he decided to finally service it so he sent us out to kill the reel on some BFT that showed up off Newport before we sent it back. I tried, and the reel sounded like death when I was done with it. The drag was fried; it had the old Penn drag washers back then. But it still turned and caught fish, even with broken parts inside (a bearing had failed).

I just thought of one more broken VS, Tattoo got pummelled by a wave and totally f'd up the handle on his, but we swapped in a replacement and it was fine. Seeing a reel's handle get that bent and having the rest of the reel suffer no damage from the impact was pretty impressive.

Lastly, VS is aware that people would like to service their own reels. Not only that but they would LOVE to unload that task to consumers since it costs them time and money. So it's possible (maybe even likely) that will happen at some point. The real issue right now is that if you put a VS back together wrong (so I've been told) you need a Dremel tool to get back into it.