Reels - Ball Bearings More or Less?

[davjak]

I know this might sound like a stoopid question, but is more better in the case of ball bearings
I see a lot say 4 + 1 and others say 9 ..
Why not just say 5?

Can someone she some light?

[Rod Bender]

I was wondering the same thing a while ago and it is just a guess that the '4' may be internal bearings and the '1' may be the roller bearing for the line guide. Why not say 5 well I don't know!
cheers
Jim

[shooto]

Most of the bearings in cheap reels are of low quality (the ones i have seen anyway)

I think it is a bit of a gimmick myself (A selling point to a degree)throw 11 cheap bearings in a spinning reel and make it sound like a smooth reel.

For instance i will use a real world example i purchased a cheap chinese reel with 11 bearings i think it was 10-11 you would think it was super smooth reel but it is not.

My old little shimano that it was going to replace is actually smoother i don't even know if it has bearing or bushes if it does it would be 2 or 3 at most.

If they are quality bearings it would make a difference

I can't complain though for the money i paid it is well built and smooth enough.

I sold all my overheads and have started to regret it already.

why they say 5 + 1 is because of the different bearing materials used corrosion resistant,stainless steel,plain coated steel etc.

[TackleNut]

I was wondering the same thing a while ago and it is just a guess that the '4' may be internal bearings and the '1' may be the roller bearing for the line guide. Why not say 5 well I don't know!
cheers
Jim

Rod Bender,

Your spot on with that guess, its how they are assessed by all but one big manufacturer that I know, and thats Pfluger, they will say that there is 10 bearing in bold on the boxes, where closer inspection will revel that they mean 9 + 1 roller bearing for the guide. Some other makes will say 4 + 1 or 5 + 1, others 9 + 1 or even 13 + 1, but now I have eeven saw a + 2, man they are really looking for something to go wrong adding bearings here and there.
Your 100% correct in my books :thumbsup: :thumbsup:

As far as needing that many bearings to make a reel smooth, well only a few years ago bushes where the norm and quality made reels were still smooth then.

cheers
TN

[Bartnmax]

Yeah Tacklenut & shoot are right on the money.
Are all the bearings necessary?
Well that depends on the design of the reel.
Basically where you have friction surfaces it's prefereable to have some sort of mechanical device aimed at reducing friction.
That means either bearings or bushes.
Bearings are generally considered the better option but that doesn't mean there's anything wrong with bushes.
Good bushes are far superior to poor bearings, & as tacklenut points out, there are plenty of poor bearings being used in reels these days.
There's a great many reels with nothing but bushes fitted, that have caught enormous numbers of game fish.
One of my all time favourite snapper reels is the Penn Jigmaster.
These have bushes rather than bearings, but if setup properly with a few modern mods (addition of carbontex drag & stainless pinion shafts) they are absolutely top flight snapper reels. They are also quite capablke of some more serious work. I've caught large gummys, kingfish, & even smaller Bronzies using jigmasters.

A lot of the bearing advertising is just hype for the sake of sales. There's no doubt that a properly setup reel with quality bearings is a loverly tool to use, but 10 poor quality bearings in an el-cheapo reel doesn't equate to anything special either.

[cheaterparts]

Good bushes are far superior to poor bearings, & as tacklenut points out, there are plenty of poor bearings being used in reels these days.
There's a great many reels with nothing but bushes fitted, that have caught enormous numbers of game fish.
One of my all time favourite snapper reels is the Penn Jigmaster.
These have bushes rather than bearings, but if setup properly with a few modern mods (addition of carbontex drag & stainless pinion shafts) they are absolutely top flight snapper reels. They are also quite capablke of some more serious work. I've caught large gummys, kingfish, & even smaller Bronzies using jigmasters.

have to agree with the penns almost the perfect reel for a kayak no bearings to worry about so when they get dunked in salt water there is very little to go wrong

I use penn 100 surf master and 501 jigmaster for my light gummy rods 10 Kg and 500 jigmasters on my 15 Kg rods
easy to clean service and are smooth enough with out bearings

[frozenpod]

Something to add alot of the lower to mid priced reels that have a lot of bearings use rubbish bearings and they do not last.

The cost to replace the bearings with quality ones is often the same price as buying the high end reel in the first place.

[Bartnmax]

Yeah I agree.
Not everyone can afford the top class reels so there's definitely a place for budget reels, but cheap reels combined with cheap bearings is often a recipe for failure.
Far better off with a cheapy reel if it's got bushes rather than bearings.
I have 2x 4-6kg baitcasters with Shakespear 15w Tidewater overhead reels of em.
I usually use these for small boat fishing on pinkys with 5kg line.
They may be cheap but with some care & maintenance to the drags, combined with low maintenance bushes, they are brilliant reels to use & damned near indestructible.

[cheaterparts]

Yeah I agree.
Not everyone can afford the top class reels so there's definitely a place for budget reels, but cheap reels combined with cheap bearings is often a recipe for failure.

the surprise reel for me has been the melaluka brand stuff - for my light bait rods I bought a few of there 3000 series costing $13 each ,spooled them with melaluka 10 lb braid about $ 12 for 500 meters. So far my biggest snapper for last season ( 74 cm ) and 3 gummys the biggest being (102 Cm ) have all been taken using these reels with the cheap braid.
This season snapper I've pulled a 5.4 Kg fish 76 cm on one of these reels, by the way they weren't bought for this duty only to put on some cheap light fishing gear. They get used almost every W/E in the yak
now out of 3 reels one has gone to God with front bearing fail but they have done near on 2 years
the fauled one did 18 months.
that not bad for reel
s that get dunked , spashed and waves over them most trips

the trick to keeping cheap ebay reels alive is to service them and grease them before use the so called Stainless Steel bearings rust up other wise
all of these cheapies got striped cleaned and some Inox MX6 grease used including a good coating around the bail arm bearing and a good coating around the front bearings/one way bearing

so it doesn't say what is better but if you do buy a cheap Ebay reel service it before using it and the Inox MX6 does the job very well .

[TackleNut]

As Cheater says,
Inox is a fisho's best friend.

And I am right behind Bartmax with the use of quality bushes and good drag set ups.
When you really look at it what are the el cheapo 10 bearing reels worth ?
Sure they make them all shiny with bright paints and high lites, what I call flash & glitter but remember not all flash & gliiter is gold. Just like a Casino, they both look flashy & good so you spend your cash, in the end you normally walk away feeling cheated, robbed or like an idiot.
Just like in real life, If the reel sounds way to good to be true, then it probably isn't.
So what is a reel with 10 crappy bearings worth ?
10x ohh crap, I shouldn't have bought it.

I know myself, as I used to sell and use a few for myself. It can be quite embarrasing when your hooked up to a 1/2 decent fish when all is whiring on the drag and the bearing are screaming louder than the drag clicker.
Or the amount of times I have used a real once, and forget to clean it straight after a trip out in the boat only to come back to clean & grease it a month later.
Opps to late, 8 or 9 so called stainless steel bearing rusted and some fully seized. Not just once or twice either. Good thing I was selling the same models, so they didn't cost me very much at all.

I will even give you the price I was getting them for, $7.50 + $3.00 for supposed to be bulk shipping at the time, for a so called size 6000, which is about the size of a Shimano Sienna 4000 spinning reel. So for $10.50 I really didn't mind it so much at the start, later on they did get on my nerves, then relagated to places where they will never see the light of day again. No not up my butt, but close enough.

regards
TN