Ball bearing race for centerpin reel

[Philip]

Clean tackle jokes aside, I managed to drop one of my centerpins into the sea...whoops ! mg: ...not such a great idea and it looks like one of the ball bearing races is knackered so I am going to get a replacement ball race.

Its a Marco Cortesi MK1 pin. Does anyone know the size for a ball bearing race in it or whether (long shot) there is a standard size for bearing races in pins ?

After close inspection with a tape measure I believe its a 687ZZ (7mm x 14mm x 5mm) but I thought I would see if anyone knew for sure.

Thanks.

 

[thecrow]

No idea about standard size but the bearings 687zz are cheap enough to take a chance on.

 

[tigger]

Might be cheaper and less hasstle to buy another one of the same. I think they often come up on ebay for not a lot of money.

Just looked on ebay and someones selling new bearings for one for around 15 notes. Someone's selling a new boxed reel for about 28 notes.

 

[Philip]

The reel only cost £30 & it looks like I can get a replacement bearing on line for a couple of quid + PP ...I was just trying to avoid going back and forth if I get the measurement wrong.

Having said that I have found a shop that specializes in bearings, its a 1 hour traffic jam from me but taking it there is probaby the safest bet if I cant be certain of the size.

 

[tigger]

The reel only cost £30 & it looks like I can get a replacement bearing on line for a couple of quid + PP ...I was just trying to avoid going back and forth if I get the measurement wrong.

Having said that I have found a shop that specializes in bearings, its a 1 hour traffic jam from me but taking it there is probaby the safest bet if I cant be certain of the size.

Good luck .

 

[chrissh]

If you can get the bearing(s) out take them to a bearing supplier or RS Components most town have one on an industrial east the will check the size with a vernier gauge for the correct size and fit

 

[S-Kippy]

I bought an MC out of curiousity and following advice I found in some review decided to change the bearing. It was the right size bearing but the reel was worse with the new one in than the original.

Fortunately the new bearing only cost a couple of quid.

 

[iain t]

There is a company selling bearing for your reel on eBay. Not a bad price too

 

[Philip]

Thanks for all the replies.

I bit the bullet and battled the traffic to go to the shop rather than order on line. Got the bearing which was indeed a 687ZZ 7mmx14mmx5mm (so my eyesight works). It only cost a couple of quid & I fitted it in the reel and its fixed the problem. The reels spinning like a good’un again. Happy with that and I’ll do my best not to drop it in the sea again.

For anyone interested the process to replace the bearing was dead simple and required no special tools & I imagine is fairly similar for other bearing pins. Basically you undo the large center screw to release the spool from the backplate. Then undo the 4 little screws holding the cog in place. This will uncover the central hole the spindle turns in. The ball bearing races are at each end of the hole and there are two of them. They are press fit and I basically pushed them out with a wooden toothpick. Just plug the new one back in and screw it all back together again. Easy peasy.
I’ll also add that having now dismantled the Marco Cortesi I am even more impressed by it. Nice solid bit of engineering and well worth the £30 in my opinion anyway.

 

[iain t]

Did you clean the bearing before fitting them ?. Lighter petrol is the best to degrease them. Then a drip of light oil such as 3 in 1 or sawing machine oil.

 

[Philip]

I didnt clean them..the new bearing appeared to turn just as well as the other original bearing that was in there but I did stick some oil in there when I screwed it back together.

Actually having now given it a test run I have to say that although its fixed the obvious problem I had, the reel (as Skippy also mentioned above) does not run quite as smoothly as it did on its original bearing. Not sure there is really much I can do to rectify that. I suspect its the new bearings being a tiny fraction different to before.

 

[S-Kippy]

I didnt clean them..the new bearing appeared to turn just as well as the other original bearing that was in there but I did stick some oil in there when I screwed it back together.

Actually having now given it a test run I have to say that although its fixed the obvious problem I had, the reel (as Skippy also mentioned above) does not run quite as smoothly as it did on its original bearing. Not sure there is really much I can do to rectify that. I suspect its the new bearings being a tiny fraction different to before.

Odd that isnt it ? I can only surmise that the reel is not machined precisely enough for a " quality" bearing to fit. On mine it was noticeably less smooth so I put the original bearing back in. No idea where the reel is now....its another one of my spontaneous purchases that gets played with but then put away and never seen again.

 

[liphook]

Bearings usually come packed with grease. Clean this out and replace with a drop or two of very light oil and it will spin more easily and for much longer.

 

[Julian Peacock]

There are some ceramic bearings available that I fitted to a CP of mine. I’m not sure if there is a Marco size....

 

[Keith M]

I use a light sewing machine oil if I oil my centrepins, to which I very occasionally add a little graphite from a pencil (if it’s not a bearing centrepin) and this works fine for me.

Warning - DO NOT USE WD40!
This may be obvious to most if not all of you but I say this because when I was much younger I thought it was a good lubricant (which of course it definately is not); and I once used it to oil one of my bearing centrepins (a ‘Black Cat’) which at first seemed to work fine; however; as you can guess it was the worst thing I could have done because as it dried out it left a sticky residue behind which totally clogged up the bearings mg:.

Keith

 

[Philip]

Odd that isnt it ? I can only surmise that the reel is not machined precisely enough for a " quality" bearing to fit. On mine it was noticeably less smooth so I put the original bearing back in.

It is odd although on mine its very subtle and I only notice as I have a second MC to compare it against. I actually think it may be for the opposite reason that the reel is so precisely machined that anything other than the orginal bearing will always have it running less smoothly as no two bearings are 100% identical.

I suppose one way to test it would be to take a bearing out of the other MC and put it in this one, I recon it will still not run as smooth as before but I dont want to mess up the other reel trying it.

Bearings usually come packed with grease. Clean this out and replace with a drop or two of very light oil and it will spin more easily and for much longer.

I may give that a try ...flush it out (with petrol?) and re-oil it just to see if it will make a difference. I have my doubts but nothing to loose. As I say the reel works well enough, its just not quite as good as before.

 

[davebhoy]

It is odd although on mine its very subtle and I only notice as I have a second MC to compare it against. I actually think it may be for the opposite reason that the reel is so precisely machined that anything other than the orginal bearing will always have it running less smoothly as no two bearings are 100% identical.

I suppose one way to test it would be to take a bearing out of the other MC and put it in this one, I recon it will still not run as smooth as before but I dont want to mess up the other reel trying it.



I may give that a try ...flush it out (with petrol?) and re-oil it just to see if it will make a difference. I have my doubts but nothing to loose. As I say the reel works well enough, its just not quite as good as before.

Lighter fluid and then sewing machine oil do the job.

I replaced the bearings in a Marco Cortesi with some quite expensive good quality ones, it made no difference at all

 

[iain t]

As i said to clean out before use. I've replaced all my bearing in my pins except the TFG Freeflow that can already with ABC 9 bearing. Even when i buy a new pin or any reel the first thing i do is a strip don and re- lube.

 

[tigger]

I've never replaced the bearings in any of my ball race reels, they all work the same today as the day I bought them. I've been uising some of them a lot for 14yrs now.
Obviously Philip is replacing his bearings because he's dunked it in sea water (although i'm sure if they'd been washed out with fesh water and then oiled they would have been fine) and that's why he needs to replace his.
I'm curious to know what other people are doing with their reels so as to need to repace them?

 

[thecrow]

I'm curious to know what other people are doing with their reels so as to need to repace them?

I would imagine its to try to improve the performance of the reel although I wouldn't want one that was even more free running than the bearing reel I already have as it requires very little inertia to start it revolving as it is.