CARBONTEX DRAG WASHERS
Carbontex sheet is the ultimate drag washer material for fishing reels. Tough, inexpensive, easy to cut and fit, almost impervious to heat, it’s a quantum leap over the fibre washers fitted to so many factory fishing reels. Check the comparison:
Carbontex sheet has a light cross hatched surface, which holds drag grease. Compare these two washers. The brown one is the stock factory washer from a Daiwa 40H:
Here’s how the new drag washer looks, when fitted:
To get the right size washer for the drags in your reel, simply use the old washers as a template when cutting out the new carbontex ones:
To cut the washers out you can use scissors or a craft knife and for the internal hole, a power drill is okay. But if doing more than one reel a cheap punch set (as used for leatherwork) makes everything so much faster and easier. Apply a good quality drag grease to both sides of the carbontex washer:
We supply carbontex in a 1mm sheet which fits the the vast majority of reels on the market:
The cost is $20 for a sheet that just fits in a DL envelope, including delivery within Australia. If you would like to proceed we will need your credit card number, or PayPal or EFT payment, plus your delivery address. You can make multiple drag sets from one sheet. Here’s what one of our clients wrote about his $20 sheet of carbontex, in November 2011:
with a bit of careful cutting, we managed to upgrade the drags to the following reels from 1 sheet of your carbontex drag material:
2 x Shimano Symetre 4000’s
2 x Shimano Spheros 14000’s
1 x Shimano Baitrunner 6500’s
1 x Shimano Corsair 400 baitcaster
1 x Shimano TR200g o/head
The TR200G had one washer with small locating tags on it, so instead of using the wad cutter we simply held the old washer firmly to the sheet of carbontex and used a pair of sidecutters to cut around it and to leave the tags there. A bit of sanding and filing made it near as damn to perfect.
We found with most reels that a very light smear of reel grease on the washers made it really, really smooth. Very pleased with the result. Plus, as mentioned, I reckon it adds about 20% extra drag pressure to the reels, maybe you guys could do a before and after test to prove or disprove this!
When the tackle shops sell 3 carbon drag washers to do one reel for $25, and we managed to do 7 reels, that’s pretty damn good value, hey!
So, look forward to receiving the 2 extra sheets ordered, we still have a stack of other reels to upgrade!
Cheers, Grant
Check these links for a how to on installation and let me know if anything further is needed,
http://www.sydneyangler.com.au/forum/showthread.php?t=19899
