Stella had herpes, elbow grease fixed it.

A friend's Stella 10000SW have been in storage for about a year and developed some serious pitting around it's spool lip. Shimano's spool lip has a proprietary coating that's super hard and resists corrosion. I'm curious to find out the source of this pitting since the reel's been properly rinsed and lines removed before storage.

The spool lip is part of Shimano's line propulsion management system where the super hard coating serves as a ramp and guide for lines to peel off during a cast. With pitting developed, the rough pitted surface may potentially damage any lines that's suppose to glide over the lip.

I'm tasked to inspect and see if I can help fix this lip herpes.

Not sure how but this Stella's got some lip herpes. Note the tiny dull patches around the spool lip

Lip herpes found around the lower section of the spool lip.

Very odd area to develop pitting and corrosion as the inner lip is pretty much protected from physical boat damage and impact. I'll need to run some trial fixes on a small pitting area before committing to a full fix. A strip down check and service will be done too before going all out on the herpes fix.

General inspection revealed that this reel hasn't been serviced for some time too. It's got some fiber trapped between the crank handle and knob.

Collective fiber stuck in between the crank handle and knob bearing. Some form of vegetation. Bearings are a bit dry but smooth as silk.

Degreased and contact cleaned before packing in new marine grease for maximum protection.

Pack em full, filling up any space available as redundant protection.

Drag system's in good condition, just needs to be cleaned up and application of new drag grease.

Some remnants of worn off carbon fiber and grease in the spool, to be degreased and contact cleaned.

Gunk ball collected just from physical scrubbing and brushing.

New drag grease added after contact cleaned.

Line laying roller's dried out too.

No damages or binding found on the line laying roller system.

Shimano grease used to pack the line laying roller system full.

Pack them to the brim.

One way bearing's in excellent condition, well lubricated and with proper stopping power.

Gearbox looks to be in great condition too. No salt crystals build up, no burnt grease.

No burnt grease, just need a little top up and coat the entire gearbox.

Putting the grease where it matters. A little topping up too.

Coat all the surfaces to displace water in the event that water do get in.

Now we move towards addressing the lip herpes. On close up inspection, they look like it's spreading around from beneath the hardened coating outwards. The only theory I can offer here is that there's some form of gap between the hardened surface and the base layer (manufacturing defect?) which allowed salt water to seep in between and slowly corroding the layer from the inside out.

The pitting surface is coarse and scratching with a pick to remove corroded bits didn't do any good.

Some of the coating's flaked off too.

Deeper corrosion on some areas.

Some trials using degreaser, contact cleaner, and solvent together with a pick on a small area didn't do much to remove the pitting. I'm guessing it'll be mostly elbow grease from here on with polishing and buffing.

Polished and buffed a small area. Seems to work great as the proprietary coating is quite thick and easy to work with. The surface seem to react well with polishing to remove corroded bits. Note the diagonal scuffed lines, they are yet to be buffed to a mirror finish to reflect original condition of the spool lip.

Polishing and buffing can only do so much to remove the pitting to reveal that shiny smooth finish (green). Some parts are just too damaged (blue) with coating chipped off. I'll just have to resort to smoothing out any burrs or rough surfaces.

Some not so serious pitting developed into pockets of mini dimples. Smoothing them out would be fine too so long as there are not burrs that will catch the tiniest of line fibres.

The biggest chunk of the proprietary coating chipped off. Luckily the base is of a smooth finish too.

Green, as far as polishing can do. Blue, heavy pitting beyond the help of polishing.

When buffed to a mirror finish, you can hardly spot any damages with the naked eye. Only when you run a finger along the spool lip will you be able to detect slight dimples as shown close up above.

Another happy customer in the cards here saving him from buying a new spool as replacement. Possibly considered banishing this reel from the collection of battle gear too. Spool lip herpes? Fixed it with some elbow grease.