Mr. Rusty visits Shimano Speedmaster

The final installment of Mr. Rusty and Dr. Hide. A Shimano Speedmaster with complains of rusty screw on the gearbox side. A thorough check and general service was also on the cards here.

Mr. Rusty didn't even bother hiding this time, openly showing where it left nasty surprises.

This reel feels perfectly fine and smooth and doesn't feel like it needs much done. But a strip down would be good to go through wear and tear or signs of damages. Upon opening up of the gearbox, there's water everywhere due to rinsing after use. No signs of rust, which is good.

Water droplets everywhere in the gearbox (red arrow). All surfaces cleaned and then brushed with marine grease to displace water. Ensure that no grease gets into the anti-reverse bearing.

With water droplets found everywhere, it's only safe to assume that the entire drag stack is also soaked and needs cleaning.

Drag stack and main gear looks well used with gunk but nothing out of the ordinary. Just a clean up and new grease application.

Externally, all parts look ok with the exception of a rusty screw. Brushed clean and smack a good dose of grease over it after screwing it back in would suffice. The anti-reverse bearing also seem to be working fine after it's early rust detection and rebuilt from a couple of months back.

Nothing out of the ordinary. Rebuilt one-way bearing's great, speedy RPCustom hybrid ceramic bearings is just as speedy.

Gearbox cleaning and new layer of marine grease applied without complications or damaged parts found.

External mechanical parts on this reel only needs a bit of cleaning and new packing of marine grease to keep it working wonderfully without binding.

Stripped down, cleaned and newly brushed on layer of grease helps displace water.

After everything's put together as it should be, a good wad of grease is packed into the rusty screw for some serious protection.

This concludes the trilogy mis-adventures of Mr. Rusty. I'm sure we'll have more incidents related to Mr. Rusty in time to come as it is close to impossible to entirely eliminate rust due to the nature of the hobby especially off shore fishing.