Any opinions on what I should do? Should I mess with it or take it back?

If it's brand new just exchange it. Get a good one, put some hours on it and have it deep cleaned and properly lubed down the road.

Its too bad they had to go and mess up a good reel. The gold carbonlite was a nice reel. They should of made it black and stopped right there. I will call store and see if I can ship it back to them for an exchange since its a two hour drive. Thanks DVT.

dude take it back. I've already exchanged twice and it's the same ordeal. I'm not driving 90 miles again to exchange. I've already posted about this. I think that it's how the pinion rides in the yoke. there seems to be a significant amount of play where the spool shaft goes through the pinion gear allowing the pinion gear to ride crooked in the yoke. a simple pinion bearing would fix it. they definitely need to go back to the drawing board on this one. personally I don't think there are any good ones because I opened at least five boxes and it was the same story. Tell me this, is it smooth when there is no spool tension or pull from a lure?

is it the high speed version? i know they have that problem with the high speed version. bass pro here says they have returned a lot of the high speed ones.

Its a little quieter throwing it around the yard than actually fishin it. I oiled the bearings today and that seemed to help some. I noticed the brass piece that the spool shaft goes into has a ton of slop. What the heck is that all about?? I agree they need to rethink this reel. I absolutely hate a noisy reel. The new brakes suck too! I suppose I will have to drive dang near two hours back to BPS to return this thing, YEE HAW at 4 bucks a gallon I will have a ton wrapped up in this clunker. It is the 6.2 to 1 ratio.

Its a little quieter throwing it around the yard than actually fishin it. I oiled the bearings today and that seemed to help some. I noticed the brass piece that the spool shaft goes into has a ton of slop. What the heck is that all about?? I agree they need to rethink this reel. I absolutely hate a noisy reel. The new brakes suck too! I suppose I will have to drive dang near two hours back to BPS to return this thing, YEE HAW at 4 bucks a gallon I will have a ton wrapped up in this clunker. It is the 6.2 to 1 ratio.

Without the spool in there is nothing to align the gears correctly so there will be slop until the reel is together. Reels with a bearing pinned to the drive side of the spool shaft are that way. On that style of reel it's a bad idea to crank the reel with the spool removed. On some reels the gears can bind if the spool shart is not there to align them. They can be damaged if you continue to apply pressure to the crank handle after the gears bind.

I'm kinda glad I grabbed a 5.4 for cranks. I took it for a test drive today and it's fine. I did take mine apart first and flush the grease out of the spool bearings, oil them and give it a general cleaning first so maybe that helped.