When I am taking care of my rods and reels, what do I put oil on and what do I put grease on?

Oil all bearings and the levelwind system.  Grease everything else - sparingly!

Oil bearings and grease gears. Make sure all traces of old lube are removed and lube sparingly. Use only specialty drag grease on drag washers.

the gears in the front on the level wind use oil, not grease?

the gears in the front on the level wind use oil, not grease?

This is correct.

With all due respect I disagree with the oil on the level wind gears. All modern reels I know of disengage the level wind during the cast so a grease will not impede distance. Grease is a better load supporting lubricant and should be used sparingly on all the gears.

If there is published information on using oil on the level wind gears I'd love to know about it?

With all due respect I disagree with the oil on the level wind gears. All modern reels I know of disengage the level wind during the cast so a grease will not impede distance. Grease is a better load supporting lubricant and should be used sparingly on all the gears.

If there is published information on using oil on the level wind gears I'd love to know about it?

Me too.  I'm under the impression that ALL gears get grease and the only parts that are oiled are the bearings.

Straight from the Shimano website

I use oil on the levelwind worm gear ,it won't pick up grit/dirt like grease

http://fish.shimano.com/publish/content/global_fish/en/us/index/customer_service0/reel_maintenance_instructions.download.-mainParsys-0001-downloadFile.html/Maintenance%20Tips-%20Baitcasting%20Reels%20(2%20pages).pdf

T

With all due respect I disagree with the oil on the level wind gears. All modern reels I know of disengage the level wind during the cast so a grease will not impede distance. Grease is a better load supporting lubricant and should be used sparingly on all the gears.

If there is published information on using oil on the level wind gears I'd love to know about it?

Well, you got the link provided by T-bird, now on the other hand, why not pay attention to experience ? I 've been servicing my reels for almost 30 years, in theory grease should be used on gears, right ? well, I thought that if grease should be used on ALL gears the levelwind gear should be greased, I did that, some months later I had to replace the pawl of my only BC reel beacuse it grinded so bad that it was no longer working, the dust & dirt bind and get trapped to the grease turning it into a very abrassive paste capable of grinding down the pawl teeth in a matter of months with use. After that experience I discarded the use of grease on the levelwind worm gear and used heavy oil. Problem solved, after changing the pawl that reel has seen more than two decades of use without further part replacement.

"All modern reels I know of disengage the level wind during the cast"

Lot of brand new reels do not disengage the level wind mechanism.