This is my project for my birthday, which was last weekend, though I've been working on the project all month - my mom made me a key lime pie, which I haven't pedaled off yet.
And this is an on-going project. Everything I'm doing on these and reporting now is on the slick spool side - have another plan for the drive side I'll post later.
Decided to race out a pair of 1995 AG 6500C3CT tournament non-level wind reels. These are big in the surf on the east coast, especially in UK, and Oz. Though when I brought it up on corpusfishing, there are a few in Corpus who are fond of these reels for light surf fishing also.
Thought they're twins, they are just slightly different.
The US market reel, marked Blue Yonder came from SC. It was sold as the blue Elite to the rest of the world, and this one came from UK
The main reason I picked these reels is because of the mix of great parts available from across both big ponds.
Also, the Japanese make great LW improvement parts for the smaller Abu's, 1500 to 4600, but no LW parts for the larger Abu's.
The other reason I picked the C3 is because of all the great spool options and improvements for Ultracast spools, including the shallow braid spools Avail offers for 5500 and 6500 sizes.
I wanted light braid reels (15-lb), and also plan to set up a deeper spool for the surf with heavier braid or fluoro. I went with the plan of building one at 5500 width, and keeping the second at 6500.
I'll fish these reels in the salt, and really don't have the inkling to fish baitcasters in freshwater.
The third thing that opened the starting gate for me was the barstock frames the Brits make just for the Abu CT tournament reels.
In fact, could have bought a great Akios ready to go for what I put into these, but I did this mostly for the project.
The barstock frames, aside from being gorgeous, are low profile, and bring the spool almost an inch closer to your thumb - if you've ever looked under your Abu spool, there's a heck of a lot of air there.
The reel foot, though, is a whopping 78 mm long, which requires a custom reel seat, this one, the Fuji SK2 split seat.
that last photo was shared by Rich Hedenberg, who's building the first of two rods for me, the 8'er for the 5500-wide, 1/4 to 1 oz - this will throw lures from inshore to the surf.
When I get there, the 6500 will match with an 11' surf rod, 1-4-oz - spider weight rigs in the surf (and no trigger, which would just get in the way of 2 hands).
While I was waiting for frames to arrive, I started on the handles. Always knew the 5500 was getting this 20-g Avail power handle, 55 mm pitch, which is 5 mm more than the original, and at least 70 g lighter.
Since it's flat, it got the matching flat Avail star drag, and titanium hardware to shed even more weight, and gain salt impervium.
(one chromed brass frame was already showing salt pitting)
For the 6500, tried to go cheap with a good Livre knob and cheap Gomexus curved carbon handle, 60 mm pitch, adding the Avail curved star drag - also a 20-g handle.
Unfortunately, the slick drive on the NLW reel would always shoot this handle to bottom dead center, so I regrouped with the Daiwa BG300 counterbalanced handle for the Livre knob - also a 55-mm-pitch handle.
I'm sure it's twice the 20 g - the counter-balance is that much, and only works with the Daiwa stainless hardware.
So I have a little bit of titanium hardware left over to spread among my Lew's...
I bought 3 sets of spool bearings, beginning with the plan to put the slickest on the 5500, next on the shallow 6500 spool, and the close 3rd on the deep 6500 spool.
Parts came from Japan Tackle, Mike's Reel Repair, and Akios, including a pair of abec-7 hybrid ceramic spool bearings from each.
The second winning bearings were the double-metal-sealed Akios hybrids, and they went on the shallow 6500 spool.
This spool also got the Avail lightened version of the Abu 6-pin centrifugal brake - jury still out - could be my spindle, but it rubs the brake plate if you turn the handle side down.
The 5500 spool got the super-light 4-pin version, which also requires the spring circlip to hold it to the spool - this one I really like, it has huge clearance.
The winning bearings on the 5500 are Mike's single-side-metal-backed hybrids - I was really floored, before getting my lowest viscosity oil, they would spin so fast and long they gave the optical illusion of changing directions.
The orange-seal abec-7 hybrids came in 3rd, and will go to rebuild a deep 6500 spool.
With no mag, no centrifugal brake shoes installed or engaged, and no end tension (1 mm end play on the spools), both would spin over 20 seconds with a thumb flip.
The Avail mag slides snug onto the frame posts under the backplate. The large setscrew adjusts stand-off for all 5 magnets.
Avail recommends 1/4- to 1/2-turn on the setscrew.
A quarter-turn magnet stand-off on each reel cut the free spin time exactly in half. Adding centrifugal brake cut that in half.
this is where I'll begin, but will be tuning both mag and centrifugal brakes for my targets once I have a rod to cast out back - the targets are fishing 1/4-oz lures on the 5500, and 2-oz weights on the 6500.
The shallow 5500 spool will hold 200 yds braid, and the shallow 6500 spool 300 yds.
Also, the stock Abu Ultracast spool feels like an anchor next to the Avail spool.
Also want to mention the tolerances on both the Avail spools and Akios barstock frames are astounding.
There's no way braid can get behind the spool.
Anyway, they're not twins any more, but are a lot more useful to me.
Also didn't recognize how heavy the chromed brass frames were until I picked up both at once tonight - holy cow, these reels really shed some weight.