Extra washers inside the reel

[devoker]

I recently bought a second hand daiwa 20 legalis 3000 and I thought it would be a good practice to service it as it wasn't in the best shapes. I had no issues with disassembling and reassembling even though it was my first time to service a reel. However, I found 2 extra washers inside the reel.
There were two oscillating gear bearing washer stacked on top (part 56), and two pinion ball bearing (A) washers (part 40), one in front of the pinion ball bearing (part 39) and one behind of it.

Daiwa 20 LEGALIS LT 3000D-C (reelschematic.com)

As I had no experience with servicing before, I put everything back to where I found, and assumed someone might have put there for a reason. The reel feels crazy smooth now and I have no complaints, but is it a good idea to leave them there as opposed to the schematics?

[lhan]

Hi @devoker, great you can service the reel on your own. Honestly I never have the balls to properly disassemble my reels. I'm not a mechanic or reel professional by any means so just my 2 cents here - washer is generally for even force distribution/protect over surface contact/reduce the friction due to not-so-precise manufacture process. Pinion gear and oscilation system is much weaker under load especially when the body flex a bit (like Daiwa's Zaion V body), so a washer here will help to hold the gears in place and help the ball bearings do its job better. A buttery smooth reel without load is surely a good thing, I would like to know if this will affect the performance under load.

[noelm]

Not 100% sure where you mean, but maybe the line wasn’t spooling correctly, so some packer washers were used to fix the problem? Repairing reels is really quite simple and just basic skills and tools are all that’s needed.

[Green Hornet]

Taking a brief look at the schematic, they appear to just be shim washers and are added to take some of the free play out of the reel. No biggy if you didn’t put them back in, but the reel will feel nicer if they’re in.

[devoker]

24 minutes ago, lhan said:

Hi @devoker, great you can service the reel on your own. Honestly I never have the balls to properly disassemble my reels. I'm not a mechanic or reel professional by any means so just my 2 cents here - washer is generally for even force distribution/protect over surface contact/reduce the friction due to not-so-precise manufacture process. Pinion gear and oscilation system is much weaker under load especially when the body flex a bit (like Daiwa's Zaion V body), so a washer here will help to hold the gears in place and help the ball bearings do its job better. A buttery smooth reel without load is surely a good thing, I would like to know if this will affect the performance under load.

I was also scared at first but if you have a basic understanding of schematics and have some experience disassembling stuff it doesn't feel so hard. I kinda panicked a little as a few pieces fell apart when I took out the pinion gear but it wasn't too hard to figure out where everything will go after looking at the schematics. It also helped that I am an engineer who worked at manufacturing custom machinery years ago  . Buying a cheap second hand reel was also a very good idea to gain confidence on. Now I feel like I can service most spinning reels.

1 minute ago, Green Hornet said:

Taking a brief look at the schematic, they appear to just be shim washers and are added to take some of the free play out of the reel. No biggy if you didn’t put them back in, but the reel will feel nicer if they’re in.

I put them back in but instead of 1 washer I put 2 of them as there were before. They are really thin indeed and probably won't matter if there is one or two.

[devoker]

I was looking at another shimano schematics and saw this warning. Does it mean sometimes they adjust the washers during production or qc?

[Green Hornet]

11 minutes ago, devoker said:

I was looking at another shimano schematics and saw this warning. Does it mean sometimes they adjust the washers during production or qc?

Yes. I was told that over time the castings etc used through the manufacturing process wear and the “adjusting washers” (what I referred to earlier as shims) are added to fine tune the tolerances/sloppiness caused by the wear.  
I know some pedantic fishermen buy extra shims to fine tune the sloppiness even more.  
Most of the reels that I’ve bought more than one of have different numbers of the shim washers in certain positions.

 

Edited 21 hours ago by Green Hornet