Thread: You would think I would know this!

Some of you know I clean, lube and repair rods and reels. My quandary is that Shimano parts have become very hard to find. I’ve exhausted all my resources, ereplacement parts, mystic parts, eBay, fish shop, rodnreel parts. Forget Shimano.com, they’re NO help. Some parts everyone has, most parts aren’t out there.
So, does anyone here know if anywhere else to try?

Pay attention choir; I'm preaching to you. Just like electronics and small appliances can no longer be repaired but have to be replaced, fishing tackle manufacturers want us to treat tackle as replaceable short lifespan tools. When it gets to the point where we have to pay a subscription to continue using a product we paid for, their revenue-stream generation process will be complete. A radio that only works if you subscribe to programming? Check. Next up are "features" on cars like power windows or cruise control that require yearly payments to continue working.

Fortunately, we can still fish with our old-school tackle since mine will probably outlive me. If it comes to that, I haven't used a hand-line in a long time, but I still remember how.

Well, after several hours making phone calls, I was able to track down a certain manufacturer’s service center in California. Thankfully, they agreed to send out my needed parts. These were left over from an order for parts made years ago.
Be careful of which brand of reels you buy because the parts can suddenly become discontinued. And, I don’t mean on older reels. The parts I needed were on a reel barely 5 years old!!!
If you’re looking at buying a certain reel, go to either eReplacement Parts or Mystic Parts, find the model. Then scroll through the parts listed and see how many are discounted.
If you’d like to know which are the offending makers, PM me and I’ll share what I have found. There’s two main culprits. Hint, I only fish Penn and, BTW, I hardly ever see a Penn reel on my bench.
I may be hurting my business by telling people to not buy certain brands, but I hate seeing companies causing repairs to be impossible just to make their loyal customers have to buy new products.

We have zero issues obtaining parts for Shimanos.
Are you using the old part #'s? Shimano updated and changed most part #'s. BNT , TGT and TLD numbers have gone away. If you type those in on Shimanos site they show discontinued but most are not. Just a new part #

I found a service center that gets my parts for me. Thanks for the update.

Rufus, I'm sure that if you asked folks for reels that could be broken down for parts, they would give you some of theirs. I have a few, I'm sure. May some other guys would chime in, if you're interested in getting some reel parts that way. Sure, it's not a perfect solution to the issue of unavailable parts, but maybe you could get some usage out of them. Or maybe you have the parts to fix them and sell them? I know that I have at least one Ambassadeur 5000 that I'm not using (if you have any use for it, it's free to you). Tom