Twinpower for high speed mack chase

Here's another regular service on an oldie but goldie Shimano Twinpower which regularly serves as a fast and furious hunt for speedy spanish mackerel chase. A reel used several times a year when the macks are in feeding over on the east coast.

There are no reported issues with this Twinpower and therefore this should be a straight forward strip, clean and reassembly.

Stock standard since new, served the owner very well and have racked up many catches over the past few years.

Knob bearings are still smooth but well used. Thoroughly flushed and contact cleaned for a new packing of marine grease for long life performance.

Packed to the brim, redundant marine grease spread over the bearing within the knob to act as a seal when installed.

Drags are in excellent condition with no loss of drag power even after years of usage and never over loaded when fighting fish.

A combination of carbon and hyper-disc drag material for the drag system. No lack of power and efficient for sure.

Thoroughly degreased and surface contact cleaned ready for a new layer of drag grease.

Drag housing too needs to be degreased and contact cleaned to avoid mixture of incompatible greases.

Line roller's dry but smooth. Quality stuff unlike the latest S-ARB bearings that somehow just doesn't last.

Flushed, contact cleaned and newly packed with marine grease for long life performance too.

The entire line roller system is packed to the brim behaving like a water tight seal.

Never been opened before, grease have been injected into the service port and doesn't get anywhere beyond a few splatter on the back of the main gear.

Old grease removed and contact cleaned the entire inside of the crank case. A new layer of Shimano's heavy grease applied on all exposed surfaces for protection.

Good as new, ready for more high speed chase when the speedsters are in.

As promised, straight forward service of a highly reliable Shimano Twinpower SW series reel. This reel will serve the owner for a long time to come looking at how good the condition is even after years of use and never over loading the reel unnecessarily.

Japanese Twins, check!

Here's something I can proudly tick off my bucket list of 'Japanese Twins'. Japanese made Shimano Twinpower SW series. Both of them would do great for some jiggy action, light and heavy stuff. The twins come loaded with quite a bit of 'Stella' bits and you get what you pay for. With a little bit extra effort, you can pimp it up to be 'there' with the 'Stellas'.

I'm preparing the twins to take on 2 different jiggy duties. One for the shallows in the east coast paired with Majorcraft's Giant Killing light jigging rod PE0.6-1.2 while the other takes on a PE4 rod for the deep around the straits.

The twins are both built tough to withstand quite a substantial amount of medium to heavy fish fights. They are also decently sealed from any water intrusion into the body. Bearings are all S-ARB variants that can withstand salt water corrosion for some time. Even so, it's always better to put in some extra precaution to pimp it up a bit with more/better lubrication and protection around areas that takes on most bashing and salt water intrusion.

Japanese Twins ready to be stripped down.

Upon stripping the twins down, just give it a nice gentle rub/brush down with marine grease for that little added protection on most surfaces. Make sure to avoid getting grease into the one-way bearings (anti-reverse) assembly but do give it a drop of one-way oil if necessary.

Plenty of 'Stella' trickle down goodies bar some minor bits which can be sourced and pimped up.

Line roller bearings take the most bashing as it is regularly loaded with massive amount of torque on tiny ball bearings and these twins don't come equip with water proofing seals like some of the more expensive reels with fancy techs like Daiwa's magseal. Even with special rust prevention coating on these bearings, high speed rolling and heavy grinding will wear these coatings away over time and will result in rusted and busted bearings. So, rub them down.

Marine greased up for maximum protection and smoothness in line rolling.

Surprisingly, the worm gear support uses teflon bushings both front and back. Weird things it that they made the front bushing like a sleeve and you cannot replace it with a bearing even if you want to. I've seen some folks drilling the body a little bit just to accommodate a bearing and I can see disaster written all over that kind of mod as the plastics around the front bushing housing will be too thin to support the bearings and the worm gear. The rear teflon bushing's easily replaced with bearings and shim to a glove like fit.

A tad of smoothy hybrid ceramic bearings (green) added to the worm gear support in place of its original teflon bushing and shims(red). Shimmed to a glove like fit. Both Japanese twins got the same smoothy treatment.

Shimano also decides to skim on the pawl support bits with teflon bushings and not ball bearing supported for an improved smoothness and longevity. Luckily, this can also be replaced with Stella sourced parts.

Standard teflon bushing from the twins (red), replaced with Stella bits (blue). Shims to tweak fitment (orange).

Here's another bit that's missing from the twins. The rotor lock nut, similar to the Stella, can house a bearing and sleeve for the support of the floating shaft and further beefing up of the reel's durability.

Seen here with an additional ceramic hybrid bearings, Stella sourced sleeve, and rotor lock nut with the bearing housing in view.

Here's how it looks like with bearing+sleeve assembly in the lock nut next to the rubber seal & protective cap.

These 2 twins should serve me well on my upcoming off shore adventures. Perhaps some bashing in-land to get it christened and wet!

Japanese Twins? pimped and checked!

Cranky but lose

A fishing buddy recently got himself a good deal for a seasoned Shimano Twinpower SW6000, good for jigging around Pulau Jarak. The deal comes with a brand new crank handle as the old handle suffered a weird injury of a lose crank/knob shaft (blue arrow). It's a rare kind of damage but will render further serious damages if left unchanged given the notorious fish fights we get at Pulau Jarak.

With the lose shaft, the entire shaft spins freely, which it shouldn't. This means that when you crank with load, you are generating massive amount of torque between the hardened stainless steel shaft against the aluminum arm. It's practically like drilling and prying through the hole, round and round.

This also means removing the screw that holds the knob and bearings in place a bit tricky as the screw's usually factory installed with a dab of thread locker (blue, medium strength). It had to degrease and clean off the back of the shaft (blue arrow). Upon drying, just dab super-glue sparingly between the stainless steel shaft and the aluminum arm, leave it out a bit to set. The screw comes off without much hassle once the super-glue sets in.

Cranky but lose around the blue arrow. Reddy tighty on the pin screw pointed out by the red arrow.

While the shaft that connects the arm to the reel body was a straight forward swap. It needed a coat of thread locker (red, heavy strength) on the pin screw (red arrow) thread and screwed in tight.

All the reel needs now is to hook some big bullies to be happy cranky & tighty again.