Gettin Jiggin with it at Pulau Jarak

Pulau Jarak, located close to the center of the Straits of Malacca, famous for its deep waters and strong currents inhabited by hard charging pelagics and notoriously brash demersals. This challenging combo requires you to arm yourself with jigging gear of at least PE2-3 and sometimes up to PE4-5. Jigs ranging from 100g-200g depending on the current and depths.

The Shimano Stradic 6000FJ is ideal for the job as it is reasonably priced/built, spool ready for 300m of PE3 lines, and packed with sprinkles of hand me down tech from the Stellas. We live on board the 'GT Chaser' for 3 days and 2 nights of intense jigging and possibly popping around the island depending on the current.

Ready but not quite. Needs some pimpin before it even catches a glimpse of sunlight.

The Shimano Stradic 6000FJ doesn't have seals to stop corrosive salt water intrusion. Therefore, some pimpin is needed to beef up it's internals for durability and also performance tuning with a combination of full ceramics as well as hybrid ceramic bearings.

The first set of bearings to be swapped to full ceramics, main gear supports. Shim fitted for proper gear mesh gap. Coated the body housing with teflon grease for that extra bit of protection.

Another view revealing all its balls in full glory!

Next up would be to pimp the pinion gear bearings (x-ship) and also the worm gear shaft's teflon bushings starting with the front bushing after removing the anti-reverse bearing assembly from the body.

Full ceramics for the pinion gear support, both x-ship bearings replaced, only one shown here. Note the worm gear teflon bushing on the right, it's about to get chopped!

Slides out smoothly.

It takes a bit of patience to trim the bushing as it is very tough. Best is to make the primary cut lesser than the desired removal length (similar thickness to the hybrid ceramic bearings) and fine tune it further by trimming off or filing it away bit by bit. Any accidental excess removal can easily be tuned using micro shims.

Here's a view of the hybrid ceramic bearings supporting the worm gear shaft in its housing before sliding the trimmed teflon bushing back into place.

Moving over to the rear worm gear shaft support bushing, it's a straight forward swap with additional micro shims to reduce free play and sliding for a more consistent line lay over the spool.

Rear teflon bushing for the worm gear is out, hybrid ceramic bearings in. Micro shims go between the bearings and worm gear shaft.

Onwards to the next bit, pawl bushing swapped out with a hybrid ceramic bearings and some modified Stella parts ordered from Japan. This modification is to predominantly increase durability of the reel but after the modification, there was a surprising improved smoothness to the worm gear to a point where I can pull the floating shaft forward/outward, the pawl is able to drive and rotate the worm gear! Previously not possible with the original teflon bushing.

Original teflon bushing shown below the pimped bits. Hybrid ceramic bearings sandwiched between the pawl and trimmed pawl bushing from the Stella. Micro shims sit between the hybrid ceramic bearings and the trimmed bushing for a glove like fit into the housing.

The pimped up Shimano Stradic 6000FJ's ready for battle with it's new innards and new found smoothness. The smoothness and low cranking resistance will help me quite a bit as I'll be jiggin for almost 3 days with little resting periods in between jiggin spots.

Jigs ranging from 100g to 200g, jerk baits, stick baits and poppers ready for battle.

Barracuda bites, but I-eat-choo! Tasty turmeric ginger paste over pan fried barracuda blocks!

Fish photos courtesy of Darren from Tackle Source.

The pimped up gear took on the bashing without breaking a sweat and it's well worth the pimpin as I'll be coming back to Pulau Jarak again soon. Upon quick inspection after the trip, there were no signs of any salt water intrusion or premature wear on any part of the reel. Just needed some fresh coat of teflon grease around it's gears and metal to metal contact bits.

Next test would be off shore Kuching in 2 weeks time, slightly shallower waters and I'll be testing a sweet new combo with pimped up bits as well. Stay tuned!

Busted bushing, melted bits, stuck line rollers on a buddy's Emeraldas2506 INF

I've been fishing with a buddy of mine over the past 6 months and we've been hauling quite a bit of regular sized cats and barras in our local paid ponds. He was using his first love, the super smooth Daiwa Emeraldas 2506 INF while I was on Shimano spinners all throughout.

Then comes our not so recent trip to Boon Mar Thailand where we were welcomed by decently sized barras (avg 7kgs and up) that takes on any lures thrown to them with all their might and spirited acrobatic jumps. It was a thoroughly enjoyable experience no doubt, but then comes the aftermath, he discovered that the Emeraldas feels weird with excessive play and clicking sensation while cranking the handles without line load, spool and rotor wobbles too. Not the regular breaking in looseness you usually expect but worrying wobbles and excessive free play.

He hands me the reel for a check up. I happily complied of course and quickly got to work.

Drag pressure disc & spool hub

First to be taken apart, damage count #1, the drag pressure disc, signs of excessive force binding damages can be seen around the edges of the rectangular hole. Damages can be seen on the spool hub shaft. Not a reel breaker but a good lesson learned to not use a squid reel to reel in cats or fighter barras.

Spool housing, line lay tuning shim, alien bits & spool hub retainer ring wire

Then comes the shocker. The spool was stuck on the floating shaft, odd that it should just slide out with just a few gentle wiggle.  I had no choice but the yank out the spool forcefully and as a result, the retainer ring wire was bent (pictured far right). No biggie as it was easily bent back into shape.

There was this unknown fibrous molten bits stuck at the base of the spool between the shims, I suspect this could be the line lay tuning shims as it was later discovered that the line lay shape became tapered towards the front. It was so badly damaged that it bonded onto the alloy base of the spool and worse of all, jammed up in between the alloy bushing, spool hub shaft and the spool housing. This is bad. More molten fiber was yanked out around the bushing and after several attempts trying to knock the bushing out, inaccessible by bearing pullers, it finally dislodges with some free play and dropped out.

Friction wear on spool housing and badly damaged bushing

Damage count #2. Spool housing base shows signs of forced friction wear with burrs sticking out of it's edges and the bushing's worn out creating friction instead. The bushing's worn so bad that it cannot even fit into the spool hub shaft anymore.

The base of the spool housing needed some serious fix with a dremel tool grinding off the burrs and polished off the unknown fiber bonded bits around. Damages in housing where the bushing sits was minimal therefore still not a reel breaker.

Bushing out, Hybrid Ceramics in. Pimped!

The bushing was beyond repair and couldn't even slot into the spool hub shaft. Out goes the bushing, in goes a new ceramic hybrid ball bearing which will outlast any steel based bearings out there with excellent corrosion resistant properties.

With the new ceramic hybrid ball bearing in, a quick test reveals that the spool wobble was now almost gone with a slight wiggle due to some wear on the spool housing itself.

Rotor & floating shaft's fine.

Next up, the rotor, looks good, nothing out of the ordinary. The floating shaft too. No signs of wear, which I believe is due to it being made out of high tensile steel, tough stuff.

Dry main gear, needs some TLC grease coating.

The main gear and internal bits are a tad dry and without grease protection, a few brush stroke of teflon grease is all it needs. Few cranks on the handle to know that there's too much sliding free play for the main gear between the bearings. Easily tuned and fixed with some ultra thin stainless steel or brass shims with some prior experience on gear mesh tuning during my RC days put to good use here.

Some gearing abuse wear and metal shaving bits. Needs cleaning and grease reapplication.

Damage count #3. Upon removing the main gear to clean up the used grease, there were signs of more than usual wear and some worrying metal shaving bits found. This could be due to cat cranking abuse and possibly inappropriate gear mesh free play as stated above.

Pinion gear shaft wear. Some abuse aftermath.

Out comes the pinion gear shaft. Some signs of wear,  slightly more than expected probably due to barras and cats abuse. Pictured, #1 is supported by the one-way (anti-reverse) bearing shaft, #2 being supported by a stainless steel ball bearing while the far right tip (past the gears) is being supported by a thin bushing which I believe is teflon or some other materials. This is where Shimano makes a difference with some of it's reel designs with another ball bearing, they call it their 'x-ship' system.

Anti reverse clutch (one way needle bearings), a little lose and abused. Cleaned and new oil needed.

Upon closer inspection around the one-way bearing (anti-reverse clutch) housing, #1 being the one-way bearing shaft, #2 being the white plastic needle bearing housing, excessive abuse resulted in more than usual wear and tear with some free play wobble and also slight inefficient anti-reverse stopping with a slight back play before stopping. This is the cause for the rotor wobble, not exactly a reel breaker that starts to grind against the body, but manageable so long as it's not being used to haul big cats or feisty fights.

The shaft and housing's been removed, cleaned and lightly lubed with special one-way bearing oil (not grease) and the anti-reverse stop seems to have improved slightly.

Pimp it up! No love for line roller bushings, Hot love for Hybrid Ceramic Bearings!

Finally, a quick check on the line roller reveals plenty of gunk jammed in preventing the roller to spin properly causing occasional line twists and fried bihun. Easily fixed by replacing the brass+plastic bushing with a ceramic hybrid ball bearing and some micro shims to fine tune the bearing placement to a glove like fit.

This seems to be the spot that gets most water intrusion and best to have long lasting bearings like ceramic hybrids to avoid premature failures.

All in all, reel's been serviced, tuned and lightly pimped up with some nifty ceramic hybrid bearings. Buddy is happy again that the reel's revived.

On to the next battle!