Maybe you guys could save me a trip to the shop…

Hi, I have a couple of older-style abu garcia round baitcasters. They belonged to my dad, he passed away when i was young and i was hoping to get into using baitcasters for big pike and muskie. I figured i should learn on what i already had so i started to monkey with the reels to try and tune them. Long story short i got a huge birds nest multiple times due to lack of knowledge and skill. I took apart the reel to get to the spool and couldn’t fit it back together. I finally got it to screw together now but when i tighten the screws when i turn the handle it doesnt turn the spool and is hard to turn. Please help. I’ve done this to 2 of these reels now trying to figure out this and I’ve about had it. Let me know ideas/knowledge/fixes. THANK YOU!

Well not sure about what is wrong, but if your in MN, I think they have the guys cleaning and fixing reals at the MN muskie expo. $10 at the door.

Yep, 4 guys sitting at the Abu Garcia booth yesterday. It would be the best money you spend getting in there.

Pull it back apart. There should be two little plastic pieces that stick out to rub against an inner spool. They slide in and out on their thin tangs to help spool over runs. They need to be pushed in before assembling. If you forced it together, you may have bent over the tangs, and hopefully they can be straightened out. The reels will just drop together, if they don’t, stop and figure out why. I still use many of my older reels, and they still work like new if taken care of, but not sure if they are worth $30 or so ea, to have someone else clean them. Its really pretty simple to do yourself, and the internet is loaded with you tubes on how to. PM me if you like, and I’ll give you my phone # and talk you through it.

Thanks ill have to try that. If that isnt it, ill just send them into abu garcia, ive heard they’ll fix them no problem. Yeah their not bad reels im just a noobie haha

carver wrote:

Well not sure about what is wrong, but if your in MN, I think they have the guys cleaning and fixing reals at the MN muskie expo. $10 at the door.

Thank you for replying. Do you happen to know where this “expo” is? That doesn’t sound like too bad of a deal to me if that works out

UPDATE:I bent the two little brakes on the spool that sonnect to the reel,i bent them back a now it works like a charm. Thank you all for your opinions. Huge thank you to Ed Sandle!

Really glad all is well, and don’t feel bad about what happened, as I did the same thing the first time I tried to clean and lube one of my old round bait casters, years ago. When casting try to be smooth as possible at first, and when setting your side tension, put a lure on, and set the tension so that when releasing it, it doesn’t crash to the ground, but falls at a controlled rate and spool barely over runs after the lure hits the ground. The more comfortable you get with casting, the more you can reduce the tension, and more effort you can put into the cast.

Musky Ed wrote:

Really glad all is well, and don’t feel bad about what happened, as I did the same thing the first time I tried to clean and lube one of my old round bait casters

Had my Abus for 13 years and still make these mistakes each year. In fact it seems to be a tradition before at least one of my Canadian trips.

Two best tips, a copy of the schematic for why I put it together in the wrong sequence. Youtube when I still have something off.