Okuma Magda Tip

Hi.

One of my Okuma Magda 20s was hanging up and not going into free spool. I took the reel apart and found that one side of the reel had grease in it and the other side- the side with all of the gearing- didn't have any at all. The freespool mechanism definitely needs to be greased and I hope I didn't bend any parts trying to get it to work. This got me curious and I checked out a few more and saw that there wasn't any rhyme or reason for lubrication on the internal components. Some had grease on one side and none on the other. Some had grease on both sides and others didn't have any on either side. All of my reels were bought new so this had to happen at the assembly plant.

With that in mind, I took all six of my reels in for service. I think I could have done them all myself, but it would have taken probably six hours to get all of them done and with that kind of time invested I'd rather hire it out to a pro.

I know others have had problems with their reels and this is probably the issue for some- improper lubrication when they were assembled. I suspect that they will work much better when I get them back. I'll bet I'll have 50% of the value of the reel in service but I'm okay with that if it makes them work better.

On the other hand, the internal parts really aren't all that bad and I was surprised to see how many drag washers it actually had. They're not bad reels but at that price point there isn't a whole lot of quality control going on.

I bought 4 new ones and I sure haven't been happy with them. I like the Shakespeare way better.

Well, I dropped my reels off at Gator Brown's in Bartlett, TN and they had them fixed in less than a week. They were improperly lubed from the factory and work better than ever now!