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Posts: 375
| talk about "cabin fever"! i witnessed an experiment that a fellow musky maniac performed on his three lunas that he purchased new in the spring of 2005 and wanted to hear what others thought about it. he tore them all down and cleaned them of all the existing oil/greese. when re-assembling, on one of them he used nothing but "hot sauce" brand reel oil, on another nothing but red reel grease (i believe made by the same co. as the hot sauce) and on the third nothing but wd-40. after re-assembling and taping the line onto itself on each spool so the reels would be free-spinning and the external spool tensions and internal braking systems set identically, he did a test where he proceeded to spin the handles with one hard downward motion, letting them go and counting the number of times the line guide went back and forth across the spool before it came to a rest. the results...with the greased reel the line guide only went across the spool 2 times then stopped dead...with the oiled reel it went across 4 times before coming to a stop and with the wd-40'ed reel it went back and forth across 12 times...!!! i spun the reel handles myself and got the same results. when turning the handles at a more fishing-type speed the wd-40 reel was without a doubt the smoothest of the three! does this mean wd-40 is the way to go? |
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Posts: 2687
Location: Hayward, WI | I'm not surprised the WD-40 was smooth. The only problem is wd-40 collects dust and dirt, and gums up easily. The Wd-40 might work well for a while, but you would probably have to take the reel apart, clean it, and re-spray it to keep it working well. Sounds like the Hot Sauce oil would be the best compromise (that's also what I use, and seems to work ok).
curleytail |
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Posts: 8781
| Depends on how much you like your reels....
I don't think it would necessarily HURT your reel, but its thin enough where its likely to wind up all over everything inside the reel including the drag washers, which shouldn't have any grease or oil on them at all. I also suspect that WD-40 will seep out of the inside of the reel and be all over the outside, where it will act as a "dirt magnet", leabing you with a bit of a mess. I haven't used hot sauce, so I can't comment on that, but the reel techs will tell you to use small amounts of reel oil on all your moving parts and reel grease on the pinion and drive gears. I can tell you from experience that all 6 of my reels worked a LOT better when I cleaned all the factory grease out of there and applied a small drop of oil here and there instead. There used to be a how-to-service-a-reel thread around here somewhere, that gave detailed instructions of how to tear down clean and lube a reel. |
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Posts: 1270
| Sure WD40 will allow the reel to spin more freely but it will also wear off the fastest. Gear should be greased and other parts should be oiled. Worm gears are not really gears and should be oiled.
FYI I have cleaned and repaired 10's of thousands of reels and have seen more harm done by over lubricating then from under lubricating. |
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Posts: 199
Location: Sandusky, OH | I use the hot sauce on my stuff, but the distance casters/ surf guys swear by an oil called rocket fuel. Comes in two viscosities, yellow and red; I think the yellow is the better oil for actual fishing. Step above the hot sauce, but I can't just buy it locally, so hot sauce it is.
Eric |
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Posts: 676
Location: Wisconsin | I found that link for Rocket Fuel....I use Hot Sauce, and I was going to try Reel butter (sp?). Might give this stuff a try..
http://www.tgsrocketfuel.com/
I see they have bearings on the site as well. Pretty cool, I actually upgraded all of my reels and added bearings where they had bushings, what an improvment.
Edited by Muskiemetal 1/8/2008 3:58 PM
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