Metanium salt water NOT-OK

I've been fishing with my pimped-up-salt-prepped Shimano Metanium for a while now taking on mostly salty bruisers at locally stocked ponds. I was very diligent in rinsing and cleaning up the reel immediately at the pond after every bashing session. At home, the reel was also set to dry indoors for a few days and occasionally in air conditioned rooms for faster drying times.

The Metanium is a very light baitcaster and casts very well without much fuss all day long. Occasionally, it will produce a squeak or 2 and will eventually go away as I've prepared the internals with plenty of corrosion protection grease coating. No complains what so ever really. Until I discover some rust stains on the spool shaft when I was switching spools, at less than 3 months of usage, I had to strip down this Metanium for checks.

Nice red and hot outside. I wonder what colour is it inside.

Apologies for the blurry pic, the insides are plenty green and fresh still.

Pinion support's inner bearing's a little dried up but smooth, new packing of marine grease will do as a barrier from salt water ingestion into the bearing and also the crank case.

Custom cut carbon drags still moist with drag grease, which somewhat reduced the jittery drag behaviour a little bit. Some test still needed for a different sized carbon drag discs.

The insides were in good condition with plenty of grease left as protection. The surprising part is that the outer pinion support bearing's all rusted up real good. This pinion support bearing sits inside of the crank case with the free spool support bearing seated further outside of the crank case covered with the mechanical brake knob cover with rubber seals.

Top left, note the bearing seated inside with plenty of rust stains. Bearing's all jammed up. Top right, pinion support bearing all rusted up while the free spool bearing's stuck too with some rust stains on side of the bearings. This calls for ultrasonic cleaning.

With one round of cleaning done, all grease have been thoroughly removed hence giving me a better picture of the actual rust damage. Lo and behold, both pinion bearing and free spool support bearing's rusted up good inside.

With the seals removed, you can clearly see that both bearing retainer cage have sustained quite a bit of rust damage while the pinion support bearing sustained rust damage on a few of it's balls.

So here's the thing, this reel's been rated by Shimano being 'salt water ok', if I remember correctly the claim which was printed on the catalogue. You can clearly see that both the bearing's a little different in colour assuming that the free spool support bearing's the S A-RB variant while the pinion bearing's the conventional A-RB type. I've also done a simple test on the durability of S A-RB bearings previously and have shown that the S A-RB bearing can withstand serious salt water corrosion.

To understand the extent of this issue, I've also had complains from our local Shimano pro-tester sharing with me about the same issue faced only after one salty session with the same Metanium model. Another buddy of mine only fished fresh water with the Metanium and in under 3 months, the same problem occurred. A customer from a neighbouring country had the same issue within 6 months of fresh water bashing.

I'm keen to find out 2 things. How did the reel ingest water which also caused this rust issue internally?

First, I've never dunked this reel in salt water before and have only rinsed it with fresh water after each bashing session. Secondly, the brake knob side's nicely protected with a rubber seal. My only theory is that the gaps between the frame and crank case cover is pretty much where most water is being ingested into the crank case. Given the fact that the case design has small outlet ports for water to pass through around the base in the event that water do get in. I'm guessing that both while fishing and rinsing after may have contributed to water ingestion and retention within the crank case, more specifically within the 2 bearings that's most exposed to water from the inside.

For water ingestion, my solution was rather simple. I've decided to NOT rinse or flush the entire reel after fishing but to have very low running water pass through only on the spool itself where most salt water gets trapped especially using braided lines. Or if need be, I would remove the spool from the body and rinse only the spool. I would then just wet my hands to wipe off any dirt of salt water around the entire reel body taking care not to have water flowing near the gaps. Toweling dry after that helps too.

With the above regime in place, I've successfully reduce water ingestion into the crank case significantly as I've open up the reel checking for water ingestion and found none after a few session.

The second part which I'm baffled is that Shimano's S A-RB bearings isn't as durable anymore, or maybe this batch of bearing's a lemon? Either way, it's a bit puzzling as to why would the S A-RB bearing succumb to rust in such short periods of time. Shimano? What's up with this?

Rust busted up bearing out of the picture, RP Custom hybrid ceramic bearings in. Pinion bearing's revived after rust removal but a little rough now.

Ready for some action once again.

Casting with this Metanium is now even better with the hybrid ceramic bearings. The only difference is that it's a little louder and a tweak on the brakes+thumb behavior change is needed as the spool spins up to speed very quickly.

Seriously Shimano, what's up with this batch of S A-RB bearings rusting up so easily on an amazing reel like the Metanium?

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.

Conquest of Gold Member

How do you pimp a reel that's already as groovy looking as a Gold Member? Inject some contrast and remove some gold to give prominence to it's flashy golden bits!

Gold Member in question here is the Shimano Calcutta Conquest. A new reel out of the box and yet old news as they've recently just announced an updated Calcutta Conquest for 2014 which will be available by the end of the first quarter.

Again, the pimped bits were all year end sales opportunities just like the Daiwa Tatula pimp up process. Bits of carbon fiber complimented by black and gold trim, black anodized parts and most importantly, hybrid ceramic bearings for some extra spinning momentum and distance.

Vanity shot of all the pimpy bits ready to be loaded into this Gold Member. A nice mash-up different brands and parts.

I'm starting to appreciate more and more of Shimano's reel designs that allows you to easily swap out parts as replacement or upgrades. To swap out the free spool support bearings, all you need is a just a tweezer. You don't even need to whip out any screw driver. Kudos to Shimano!

Bearings replaced without lifting a screw driver. Most tweezers would be able to pick out the pentagon shaped spring wire retainer. Top: bearing tucks inside SVS brake access spool cage. Bottom: unscrewing the mechanical brake knob reveals the other spool support bearing.

As usual, I would give any new reel a nice coating of marine grease all over internally to give it that extra layer of protection to dispel water. I find it rather critical for my application of not just fresh water but also salt water exposure to my reels. This Shimano Calcutta Conquest comes with pretty beefy multi-disc drag system and yet very smooth. It's a tad dry on stock and additional drag grease can be added for the extra smoothness. The drag system design looks like it can easily take larger dimension discs without any problems and I suspect the Ocea Jigger discs are also compatible. Time will tell and I will give it a try when it's time to swap them out to smooth drags.

Gold member's gearbox exposed, nicely lathered with salt water grease for protection. Wet drag washers a tad too dry for my liking. A few trips in and I'll swap them out with smooth drags in custom sizes for stronger stopping power.

The handle swap is more of a cosmetic job and a little bit of a weight reduction using carbon fiber handle. I opted for the swept handle with black anodized star drag and foam knobs with gold accents to match the grooviness of the gold theme.

Black and Gold. Knobs and handle's a custom chop job from 2 different brands. Not in favour of the red bits but not a deal breaker too until I find something suitable. This is a 98mm length handle and recently there's a longer version of 108mm which will work better with stronger cranking power.

Tramp stamp on the outside of what to expect inside.

A nicely designed & built reel, once again yet to wet the lines with mouth watering looks. All I need now is a decent trip to put this Gold Member to the test to see if the bling pimpness would be able to help lure in some victims.

RP Custom bearing tuning for some speed!

A friend sent me 3 of his bait casting reels for a quick pimp up with hybrid ceramic bearings and tune up for that extra bit of speed. The bait casters were already dressed to the nines with a variety of pimpy exterior option parts. All they need now are some speedy hybrid ceramic bearings.

Enter RP Custom hybrid ceramic bearings, new kid on the block when it comes to bearings. Casters rejoice! They are designed mostly for speed and quality rating of ABEC7 specifically for bait caster spools. There are 4 different pairs to cover most popular bait casters out there. The bearings' loaded with light oil and unshielded for maximum speed. The rubber shields are separately packed in the event that you opt for protection and durability by packing grease in instead, the choice is yours. We will be ditching the shields for these bait casters are they are looking for some speed.

Separately packed rubber shields, simple graphical instructions, Japanese mumbo jumbo & nifty stickers for bragging rights.

Most of Shimano's recent bait casters design uses a pair of similarly sized bearings for their spool, which makes a lot more sense when it comes to production.

First one to get speedy RP Custom hybrid ceramic bearings, the Shimano Scorpion DC. One on the DC brake side and another on the mechanical brake side, both bearings are similar in dimension and works for most Shimano baitcasters.

Daiwa on the other hand uses 3 different sized pairings across their popular bait casters, probably due to their innovative design variation of the magforce braking system as well as the variety of bait caster categories for a variety of exclusive applications.

Daiwa Millionaire SW pimped up feels more like a Zillionaire, small bearing on the magforce side and the bigger one's on the spool support gearbox side held in place with a pin. A custom pin remover is needed here to remove the pin so not to damage the shaft.

As for the Shimano Calcutta Conquest, one on the mechanical brake side and the other's tucked under the spool support cage where the SVS brake adjustments can be access.

Nice touch on the stickers for bragging rights on what's inside.

Shimano bait casters are the easiest to swap out the spool bearings due to it's standardized designs while the Daiwas as well as some Abu Garcia bait casters requires a custom bearing pin remover in order to replace one of the spool support bearings.

All in all, 3 bait casters ready for some speedy action and these RP Custom bearings give much more bang for your buck compared to some of the older bigger brands out there and they seem to be pretty good upgrades to get that extra bit of speed. Word is from some folks is that they feel that it casts 'better' than stock bearings. I'll check in with some seasoned casters to get some thorough feedback if available.