Changing Drag Material on Spinning Reel

Anglers how fishes regularly will know that drags will degrade over time, either loss of drag or jerky drags. Most time, a simple clean and service of drag will be suffice to get it back to shape, but sometimes, a change of drag material is required.


This is a simple tutorial on how to change the drag material on your spin reel. I choose a budget reel instead of a high end reel for a simple reason, I believe 95% of reel volume sold are budget reels. Most spin reels have the same configuration and the choose reels for drags, though some have washer proof washers (e.g. Daiwa Freams 4500J), or have the drag material at the bottom of spool instead (e.g. Penn SpinFisher). Least not forget some reel have duel drag (top and bottom of spool) but not going to cover them simply because I do not have such reels.

Before I proceed, I do recall a fisho asking why I bother to service and upgrade my spin reels (which are mainly budget reels). He say "Just get a new one when you old one breaks down, why bother with them when they are so cheap". Actually I am stump for an answer to him, in economic sense it make no sense, but boys being boys, they need to take things apart to investigate and try to improve wherever they can. Some modifications I do are to suit my style of fishing, while others are just for the heck of it.

Enough of this off-topic discussion, back to the tutorial



What do I need?
New set of Drag material (In this demo I am using Teflon; However I have included a picture of HT100 for reference, that's the one in black)
Pincher
Very fine sandpaper (optional)
Drag grease / Paint Brush (optional)


Back off your front drag knob all the way till you are able to remove it.


Next simply Slid you reel spool out.


What you will see is what appear to be a metal washer behind a metal clip. Shown here are some other spools which are identical in concept for keeping the drag washer and material in place.


Crimp TIGHTLY to one side of the clip and lift it out of the groove using a pincer or use a SMALL long nose plier.


Slowly remove the clip from the spool, as it is usually made of spring material. It can really jump out of its socket, so be very careful and hold on tightly to the pincher or you might need to search around the room for it.


Now the easy part, using your pincer, start to lift out all it items in the ‘well’. Put them nicely lay out in the order you have taken out. Some reel have a single drag material while most have 3, do take note of the ‘dogged’ washer which is found usually the middle metal washer.
The New Drag material will replace the original, in this reel it uses 3 pieces of drag material.


If there is some rust spot or rough spot on the metal washer, rub them against the fine sandpaper to remove them and to give it a smooth surface.
Firmly press the washer onto the sand paper and give it a circular motion, do it on both side.


Optional – Grease your drag THINLY by using a small paint brush. Use only Drag grease and not any other grease. Drag grease are available at tackle shop, check with the shop to make sure it is suitable for drag. For this demo, I am using Cal's Universal Grease, simply I do like this grease and use it for almost all of my drag materials.


There are 2 different schools of thought with regard to Grease Drag or Dry drag; it is actually a personal preference. I prefer to have my drag greased, firstly to give it some lubrication, grease will also get onto the metal washer and keep it rust free, and lastly, in my own opinion, will help keep out water in the drag system. However, it is said that greased drag will not be as powerful as dry drag.
Do note that some Drag materials are meant to install ‘Dry’ (Un-greased), check when you purchase the drag materials.
Here are some samples of Drag grease available, Daiwa and Cal's, missing is another popular options available locally, Shimano. I never use that before so can't comment. One thing I notice is the price of the drag grease here in SG, more on that later in this posting.
Note - My Cal's grease is in an old container, think they have a new package or color with their new formula grease. Yet to verify if mine is the old or new formula.


Now re-assemble back the new drag material and metal washer in the order you have taken out. Carefully put the clip back, make sure all the joints are slotted nicely into the small groove in the reel.
Put the spool back onto the shaft, you might need to slowly turn the spool to get the alignment of the spool and metal washer correct. If you can recall, the metal washers have the shape of the shaft right as its center hole.

Put back your drag knot, tighten it slightly and check if everything is in order. Compress the drag by tighten the knob and re-confirm that the drag is working. Back off the knob for storage and your new drag system is ready for you to battle the next biggie.
If you put too much grease onto your drag material, the grease might ooze out from the side, when you remove the drag knob. I suggest you take them out again and remove some of the grease on the drag by brushing with a clean brush.

Now you are done with the drag service / upgrade, a simple job really.


Some Technical Stuff (Read them if you are really bored or are interested to know more)

How does the drag system works?

The drag given by the reel is provided by the friction between the drag material and the stainless steel washers. The steel washer center hole fits the shaft shape and the dogged washer lodges itself in place of the spool thus providing a non-rotation plate for the drag material to produce fiction and this is call 'drag' in reels terminology.
The need for a smooth drag is to allow the angler to wrestle with fishes close to maximum breaking strain of the fishing line without breakage. Jerky drag puts additional strain on the line when fishes are pulling thus line breakage are likely to happen. Not going into physics lessons, but basically the need for a smooth drag system.

Material

Basically, more fiction equates to more drag. So the rougher the drag material is will gives you more drag power.
Lesser Drag Power - Teflon and Smoothies (Smoothies are actually a series of drag material given by 'Smooth Drag'
Power Drag - HT100, Carbontex and leather. HT100 are Penn Carbon Fibre drag while Carbontex is by 'Smooth Drag'

Size of Drag Material

Main consideration are the Inner Diameter (ID) and the Outer Diameter (OD), and to a certain degree, the thickness. Get a new set of drag material that matches the ID and OD of your original drag material. A simple way to get the dimension is to measure the metal washer instead as the original drag material might be soft and limp already.
Sometimes you might not be able to get the exact fit as the drag manufacturer does not produce that size, what should you do. Bearing in mind that it is the friction between 2 surfaces that gives you the drag, the more surface area that are in contact will give more friction which in turns gives you a more powerful drag. So choose one that match the OD but with a larger ID, you lose more surface are if chosen the other way round.

Where to get the grease and drag material?

This is pretty tough to tell actually, I read in local fishing forum that our local tackle shop does not stock much drag grease and drag sizes. But do check out at your fav tackle shop for them.

From what I know, Tackle2000 at Pasir Ris Pond have HT100 drags (a pretty good range in sizes) and the Daiwa grease. And a lot of tackle shops do have the Daiwa or Shimano drag grease. But they are not actually cheap stuff and if you use them only on drags, one can last you a long long time. So I would suggest you share with your fellow fisho.

One reason why I really don't know much about the availability of drag material in our local tackle shop is that usually I bought them online at Smooth Drag, and they do sell the Cal Drag grease at a very reasonable price too.
However, you might notice that they do not publish the actual drag size on the website, so do email to them if you need something in a specific size, they are really friendly and helpful.