mj6700

Sorry to get back to this thread so late. I did try pulling the friction ring from under the rotor, but that made no difference. And during this process, with the rotor and roller clutch removed from the reel, I held the pinion bearing in place by its outside edge and cranked the reel- still horrible sticking and grinding. Seems the only reason the reel was spinning somewhat smoothly without a load had to do with having the mass/momentum of the spinning rotor attached. My assumption is that something is wrong with some of the gears themselves. This reel has spent some significant time in rod holders on sandy river shorelines. I gave a good effort at cleaning and regreasing those gears when I disassembled and reassembled earlier. I'd love to let an expert take a crack at it, but I don't think it makes sense to spend 50 or so bucks shipping and attempting to repair an 80 dollar reel that's six or seven years old. Thanks all, and let me know if you have any other ideas before I send this reel to the graveyard. In any case, it did serve me well.

I have a Shimano Sahara 2500 that has gone through several long seasons of fishing from shore. The reel performs horribly right now when pulling in any weight whatsoever- it feels sticky and grindy at the same time, taking more torque than should be necessary to turn the handle. With the line in the line keeper on the spool (i.e. not actually reeling anything in), however, it still seems to spin quite smoothly. Yet when I run the line through some rod guides and attach a small sinker, it feels terrible again. I disassembled the whole unit, wiped out and regreased the gears, relubricated bearings, and reassembled the reel, but the performance of the reel was not improved. I recognize that this is not a high ticket reel and it's probably due for a replacement, but any theories as to what's gone wrong with it? If some of the gearing has gone bad, would I only be able to recognize that problem once I'm actually reeling against some resistance? Even if I can't fix the reel, I'm frustrated that I can't figure out why the performance has become so bad. Thanks for any ideas.