It's a pretty long story but the teeth on my main gear broke off in one place recently, I swapped out the gear and had a REALLY hard time turning the reel after.  I posted on here and even called Penn, turns out they put my reel together from the factory with extra shims/washers in places because they couldn't get certain parts flush.  I had to work with what I had and was able to get the reel to an operable level, and even though it's not REALLY hard to reel, it still has more resistance than my Pfluger Presidente by quite a bit.  I don't know if that's a good frame of reference or if I should find another Penn Battle II to compare to in a store or something, but it doesn't seem quite as easy to spin as it was when it was new.  Since I'm not sure what I can do about it other than requesting Penn fix or replace it since the original manufacturer's installation was obviously not up to spec, I wanted to ask any of you if replacing a gear in a reel does sometimes cause it to have a stiffer turn after the fact?

 

So far I've only done free air reeling (nothing on the line) and it's definitely not terrible, but i'm sure once i'm tugging a deep diving crank behind it in the water it might cause some pretty severe hand tiredness.  I'm not entirely sure though.  Thanks for any feedback.

 

EDIT: maybe this is a helpful frame of reference, but if i spin my Pfluger handle around 1 full rotation as hard as I can and let it go, it will spin freely for 4-5 more rotations before it stops.  If I do the same exercise on the Battle II, it only makes it about 1 full rotation back around until it stops.  Like I said I don't know if you can really compare the two, my Battle II has always felt way more sturdier than the Presidente, but that doesn't mean their action should necessarily be that far off.

If I really wanted that reel to work I would send it to someone like DVT. If it can be fixed he will tell you so.

Just order a few shims, and add them to the side that is tight.

I own two Battle IIs and don’t have the issues you’re talking about. They’ve caught everything from bass to the biggest ray I’ve ever seen locally and have zero issues. I’d contact Penn and ask them to make things right. Especially if they ‘serviced’ it and it’s worse now than it was new.