I had a reel brought to me that had come back from a factory service. There was a misunderstanding by the customer because the bail wouldn’t trip. A quick look at the body/rotor flange showed no bail trip ramp, so I told him that it was a manual trip bail. All good, but it was still a bit stiff to turn and had a strange swishing noise under the rotor when spun up. My suspicion was that the rubber friction ring under the rotor that stops the handle/rotor from spinning whilst casting was either swollen or out of place. The reel was left with me and I got to it that afternoon. You may not be able to see it very well from the photo but there is a groove in the body right under the rear of the rotor where the ring locates; you might be able to just see the groove in the photo, but in any event the ring had been fitted ABOVE the groove rather than IN the groove and was thus fouling the inner surface of the rotor:

No problem: rotor removed, ring (albeit a bit swollen) refitted into the groove, job’s done. Before removing the rotor I had taken the handle off to get it out of the way and I was a bit underwhelmed by what I found. Out of curiosity I also removed the other shaft cover and found similar:

Now as I said, maybe I am being a bit picky (and the reel was a bit “used”) but I am pretty sure that this factory service wasn’t overly cheap, and even if it was (IMHO) it just shows a bit of a slack attitude to cleaning (and assembly given the incorrectly fitted friction ring), or maybe a rush to churn the repairs through in the minimum time. All parts on my bench get cleaned and usually run through the ultrasonic cleaner in waterbased degreaser (hydrocarbon/alkaline cleaners can be hard on some plastics, paints and anodizing).

Am I expecting too much from a service centre? What do you guys reckon?

Leave a comment and let me know think!