Inline reel maintenance

[Kyle1017]

Hi Everyone - While preparing gear for the weekend, I found that my Black betty 6061 and Ghost reel are not as free-spooling as they once were.  I cleaned and lubed the spool stem and bearing ID, lubed freefall "drag", and generally cleaned them up but not much of a difference.  From memory they were fine last year.  Does anyone have experience with this issue?

Thank you in advance!

[Tuma]

What are you using for lube? It might be too thick. I don’t remember the brand name but use a full synthetic oil.

[Kyle1017]

Reel butter is what I had on hand.

[slipperybob]

You only need to clean out the spool bearings, much as the same as bait casting reels have spool bearings.  Generally there are two spool bearings on the spool shaft.  All you need to do is wash the spool bearings, make sure to dry them off, then reapply one drop of oil onto them.

Personally I have not done so on my newer reels since they come with good oil in them as oppose to like over 15 years ago when manufactures just put cheap oil in them and one sort of needed to clean them out straight out of the box.  I give the spool bearings an acetone bath wash, spin them dry in a few minutes and apply one drop of oil, spin them, and them put back into reel, then spin the spool.  Yeah, I do go backyard test cast and see the world of difference.

Then again, what works well in a warmed up shack, sometimes is sluggish out in the cold temps.

[Kevin23]

Be sure you give the bearings a squirt of non chlorinated break cleaner or sort of solvent to clean out the old oil/grease that has gummed up. You do not want to put any grease in the bearings of an inline (or any reel), just on the gears. ONE drop of thin reel oil on bearing.