How do you get a Biomaster to lay nice?

After a recent off shore trip to Pekan hauling some decently sized diamond trevallys, a friend noticed that his Shimano Biomaster was starting to make noise under load. A quick visual and external inspection revealed that the line laying guide wasn't spinning. No surprises there as this is first part to usually fail when offshore fishing often with lots of salt water exposure.

This Biomaster isn't the salt water variant and to my knowledge recent Shimano's don't come in salt water variant below 4000 sized reels.

Externally, this reel's already pimped up with an after market knob. The knob also felt like there was slight binding when spinning.

After market knob with an open outer cap allows water to easily splash into the bearings. When removed, the culprit was easy to spot with gunk and rust everywhere on the shaft as well as the bearing housing. Luckily, they are mostly light surface damages. Bearings stuck as I suspect rust has caught up inside.

Surface rust and gunk on this was easy to remove but the bearing was a bit more damaged. The bearing was free again after ultra sonic cleaning was done. Possibly only minor damages and seem to be quite smooth after being packed with marine grease. Not a major deal breaker nor will it generate noise therefore a replacement isn't necessary.

Once cleaned and rebuilt, bearing was working fine, light scuff found on shaft and bearing housing. A good dose of grease pumped in to the bearing, a wad to cover the screw and seams around the bearing for better protection as water can easily flow into this area.

The line roller set doesn't look so good upon disassembly. There was some force binding damages on the bail end cap and the bearing wasn't spinning as a result of rusty balls.

Forced binding damage found on the bail end cap (top left red arrow). Rust and gunk seeped into the like guide ring (green). Light rust was found inside the bearing where it's jammed up (bottom red arrows).

With a jammed up bearing, the only way to rebuild this is to clean it ultrasonically and see if it's ok for a rebuild. The rebuild was ok after the ultrasonic bath but not 100%. This means that the bearing is good to go fishing but grinding sound may not be entirely eliminated. A quick check with the owner says that he doesn't mind trying it out first to see if he can live with it.

This reel doesn't come with seals around the line roller and therefore packing the entire assembly with marine grease would greatly help in preventing water from entering. When you have no gaps or space inside the assembly, water will have no space to fill or trapped in

I prefer to replace any space/air in the line laying assembly so that water doesn't have any space to fill. This will serve as a very good seal against water intrusion at the same time lubricating the bearings for long periods of time. On top of that, line roller bearing's function is to take heavy torque load as priority, not speed, the likes of spool support bearings for bait-casters.

Fully loaded, marine grease oozing out (left) as the line guide is being assembled back into position. Replace space/air (right) with more grease to form a seal. Any excess can be brushed off afterwards.

Upon opening up the gearbox for a regular check-up and service, the sight was a bit shocking with corroded pits seen all over the main gear. Some of the gearing tooth were also affected with slight pitting.

Box was clean but needs a nice protective layer. Corroded pits can be seen everywhere (red arrows).

Some of the pits were on the gear tooth and some of the tooth were also showing signs of good use and worn off bits.

Some deep pits, cannot be removed (red). Well worn gears most likely from heavy cranking while fighting fish (blue).

There isn't much to be done with pitting but to give it a nice steel brush down to remove damaged bits off the surface and give it a new coat of protective marine grease.

Pits are still visible but a good layer of marine grease should keep it going for a long time to come. Nicely greased up box too.

This reel has put up some serious fight against quite a bit of fish as you can see from the collected gunk of fiber and grease on the drag stack.

Move along, nothing to see here with standard drags and nicely used gunk. Don't need messing about if it ain't faulty.

All in all, this reel has seen some serious action but needs a bit more TLC than its current condition. When I first picked up the reel, there were salt crystals everywhere on the reel. A note to the owner would be to at least give it a nice fresh water rinse down after off shore action and the reel will serve him long time.