Bench Test - Zelina 30W 2-speed reel

[Reel-Rascals]

Well, it is quite true that you "Get what you pay for"... or is it?

In this case, to follow are my impressions of the Zelina 30W 2-speed reel that I just bought for $150 and then dissected "on the bench". Out of the box I'd judge that it will outperform a Shimano TLD of comparable size, but maybe that's not saying much. However, with a little DIY blueprinting, I think it would easily outperform a TLD and any Okuma Gold/Titus reel, and with a drag material upgrade ... who knows?

It just might be a pretty darn good value 'til one could afford Penn Internationals or Shimano Tiagras... again, provided you can take care of your own reels.

Note:
My drag scale broke a month ago during the tuna season so I wasn't able to get before and after (blueprinting) drag numbers, nor determine when it loses freespool ... sorry.

=============================================
Specs:
* Line capacity of 935 yards of 30# mono or 500 yards of 60# mono
* 2-speeds, 1.7:1 and 3.9:1
* 6 stainless-steel ball bearings
* 48 ounces in weight
* 1-piece machined aluminum frame
* 1-piece forged aluminum spool



Engineering:
Engineering-wise it is a very simple and intelligent design, seeming to be a mix of the best features of a Penn International combined with the simplicity of the Shimano TLD series. The frame is robust and heavy, using convex features and fillets to beef up the cage, which is 5/16" thick on the cross beams. It takes down much like a TLD 25.

Most internal parts are stamped stainless steel, but with extremely clean cuts on them, with no burrs or rolled-over edges. There are 6 capped bearings in the reel and free spool out-of-the-box wasn't that great. So I pulled the covers off the bearings and found them packed with a clear synthetic grease of a viscosity similar to dielectric grease. Once cleaned and lubed with Corrosion-X they spun beautifully, significantly increasing freespool time.

Others have commented that these reels use thin materials, but I didn't find any evidence of that and if anything, it is built much heavier and stronger than I expected.

Machining:
I found no machining flaws in my reel. All features were of uniform measurement, with clean surfaces and no machining lines apparent. Overall fit and finish is excellent, though to me the silver color looks a bit too bead blasted in appearance. The frame and spool each appear to be machined or forged from a solid billet of aluminum, with the spool very solid and heavy in weight. I detected no axial or radial runout in any of the spool surfaces using my indicator tools and a V-block.

Drag:
The drag disk is huge almost the full diameter of the reel itself, but it is of the strangest material that I cannot identify. On the back plate it looks very similar to the "circuit board" looking material that Shimano uses, but on the drag side it does not look like the canvas disc like single-speed TLDs use or the super-duper woven drag material Penn uses. Rather, while you can see evidence of some woven material only on the edges, the face of the drag surface is a super slick smooth coating, like some Teflon coating.

Until my new drag scale comes in I haven't played around with the Bellville washers, but I'm sure that modifying the stock arrangement will help.

Parts:
This is clearly where they are saving money. This reel uses chrome-plated plastic parts, like you see used in the automotive industry, that are used for some pieces like the gear shift trim cap and the right-side lever housing "trim" panel. In no case did I see plastic being used as any load-bearing part. For example, that lever housing is ½" thick plastic and the bosses where the screws go through the housing are thick walled or solid, and then this housing is covered by a 1/16" thick chrome-plated brass plate, where the screws go through the plate, through the bosses, and then into the solid frame for at least 1/2".

All screws were stainless steel, of what series I don't know, but using a magnet I could not detect any internal piece that would be subject to corrosion.

Quality:
of assembly ... or the lack there of! This is definitely the reel's biggest weakpoint! Inside the drag cap, the drag bearing surface is held in place by 6 flathead screws in a 1.5" bolt circle. At least 2 of the 6 screws were NOT FLUSH OR BELOW the bearing surface, so when I first tightened up the drag, I could "hear" those screws bearing onto the drag material. I'd bet that material could catch a 'high' screwhead, then shred, and possibly lock up in an intense battle!

Other:
I found no loose screws in my reel, in fact most points where reels fail (handle screws, lever knobs, etc.) have a shellac/loktite product apparent on them. The only place I'll add loktite will be those screws holding the drag bearing surface to the spool and then on the drag cap itself.

I am looking into replacing the drag washer with one from a Shimano or Penn 30W or larger reel, which will be greased, but I still have some measurements to take. When I reassemble the reel, I will lube and grease everything.

Ergonomics:
This is the strongest point of the reel. The handle is massive and has the 15-degree (?) tilt so prominently sold as aftermarket parts on some reels. Ergonomically it is the one of the slickest reels of this size/type I've ever held. All of the features are where they should be and Penn should copy their clicker engagement lever and use it on their International reels as it is simple and positive.

The left-side plate has a rubber washer to seal the drag. Overall it appears to be a pretty tight reel and well sealed (mostly by design) against any water ingress.

Summary:
Based on my observations, I would NOT use one on fish without tearing it down, checking the drag surface screws and lubing the bearings with a thinner lube. Then reassemble it ... perhaps blueprinting it in the process too.

PROS
-Price, I paid 150 for it ...
-Ergonomics
-Looks like a Penn or Shimano drag washer could easily be modified to fit
-Very simple and easy to work on

CONS
-Should be torn-down, checked, greased, and lube before use, maybe after each trip, 'til it proves itself
-Parts availability
-Warranty or service unknown
-Durability and reliability unknown

I will use it on school tuna. Heck, even if I end up just leaving it on a shelf or on my desk at work ... for only $150 ... I sure had fun playing with it!

Now ... only time on-the-water will tell ...
=========================================
Disclaimer ... yes guys, I know it is a "cheap" reel ... so flame away .

I just so happen to be one of those guys that just has to take things apart. I just can't afford $600 reels this season to play with.

Great report

[Dr. Rob]

Excellent. Good work.

It's great to see precisely this sort of report from qualified personnel.

I for one have long wondered over the now-common product lines being sold cheaply all over the world, and wondered over their percieved quality or lack thereof. And, mostly, if there would room for improvement with reasonable effort. The economic comparison to buying a new, more expensive product and immediately performing modifications is obvious.

BUT we sort of need to keep in mind that not everyone has access to the tools, machinery and knowledge base of someone like Rascal.

Still though, an excellent report of important info. Thanxman.

Doc.

[jeffro22]

thanks for the report!!

[twotems]

Very interesting and an excellent report. Well worth a look if your modifications give it the reliability of a Shimano.

[jeffro22]

Reel- Rascals, have you had a chance to use the reel yet? Curious as to how it has performed

[John_Madison CT]

Send one to Alantani, he'll give us the skinny.

[CAPTJohnny]

That is one impressive report, thank you

[CAPTJohnny]

When I looked this reel up it came back $449.00 for the 30W, how did you pay 150?

[jeffro22]

ebay, there is one there now for $199 or best offer.

[jeffro22]

copied this from another site...

bought a 50W on e-bay for $189. I own a number of Shimano's and Penn's that I use on 16 day trips out of San Diego. I was curious as to what the Chinese could produce for that price.

The first thing I did out of the box is load it up with 100lb line to check the drag. To get good freespool and 20 lb of drag you have to go past the normal strike setting which is a black button with a flat and a sharp corner which is hard to get past. The easy solution is to round off the front side of the button to make it easy to get past. This gives you perfect drag just on the other side of it and plenty more beyond if you need it. This solution is much easier than messing with the bellevilles or lever cam.

The next thing I did is mount it to one of my 6455XXH tuna sticks, set the drag to 20 lbs, attached the line to a chain link fence, then ran about 200 yards. The spool got pretty hot. After that I wound back the 200 yards under as much pressure as I could. I repeated that several more times for 10 yard stretches, peeling of line then reeling it back in under pressure, checking if it would switch gears easily under load. I figured the only real test would be to try to simulate actual conditions while hooked to a 200 lb tuna.

Here's what happened.
It seemed to shift in and out of gear nicely. The drag started to get uneven and jerky and the reel seat came loose as the screws had started backing out. If I would have kept it, up the reel seat would have ripped right off the reel.

I began to dissmantle the reel after the "test" and found:

The reels seat is attached by 4 screws that are about size 8 in diameter but some sort of metric thread spacing. They go directly into threads that are tapped into the housing but are a "loose" fit. No steel inserts, no other backup features like most quality reels have. They are relying on 4 undersized Aluminum threads, that are inherently weak, to hold steel screws with minimum contact area due to the loose fit. This is a disasterous design flaw. How would you like to hook a fish of a lifetime and have the reel seat break loose when the screws rip out of the flimsy Aluminum threads?

The drag plate appears to be stamped stainless steel. It had a ding on the back side that created a high spot on the front side that was bearing against the drag washer. This was wearing the drag washer, which was some unusual rubbery teflon material, in a small area, creating the jerkiness. I simply don't trust that material and would never use it.

Otherwise, as Reel-Rascals pointed out, the rest of the reel seemed pretty impressive in its construction.

Obviously, it was unusable for big fish as is but I was determined to get it up to snuff.

Here's what I did:

I removed the drag disc and ground the front surface with progressively finer aluminum oxide paper until it was flat and smoothly polished. I replaced the drag washer with one used in a shimano triton trolling 50 series. It was a close fit and only required some minor trimming with an exacto knife, and punching four holes in it for the attachment screws. I put loctite on the screws holding the drag disk as Reel-Rascals suggested. After this rework, the drag is silky smooth.

I drilled out and retapped the holes in the housing that hold the reel seat to a beefier 10-32. Opened up the holes in the reel seat to about .202 to accept 10-32 screws. I installed the screws from the inside of the housing after spotfacing the inside surface so that the screw heads would not stick out too much and affect line capacity. I also rounded off the edges of the screw heads so there were no sharp corners do damage the line. I used selflocking nuts on the reel seat side. This arrangement ought to be bulletproof. The weakest link is the locknuts and they are rated at 2460 lbs axial tensile strength.

When I get a chance I will run the same test again and see how it holds up. Hopefully there are no other fatal flaws.

Bottom line:
This reel is unuseable out of the box. From the other posts you can see there are lots of workmanship issues that vary from reel to reel. There is a major design flaw in the reel seat attachment on the 50W that I imagine could exist on the other reels. The drag material is questionable and I wouldn't trust it.

This reel in its current state is of Prototype quality. I don't know who this Zelina guy is or if he's even the one who designed this product, but whoever did really blew it. It looks great, has many good features but it appears he went into production before it was thoroughly tested. It has fatal flaws that have already ruined its reputation. No wonder it's selling so cheap on e-bay with few takers.

Do not buy these reels unless you are willing to find the flaws and rebuild the reel to correct them. In my case it took several days of work to fix the problems. I think I now have a reel that will hold up, but it will never be my primary reel and I will not play with it on a trip until I've already boated a few good fish on my proven tackle. On the other hand, it was kind of fun to get it up to snuff and it will be satisfying if it performs well and lands a big fish.

On a futher note:
I've had the best luck with shimanos out of the box. I have one shimano TTS 50W that I had two speeded that has caught 330 lb, 296 lb and the 202 lb tuna below, as well as lots of lesser fish. One of the Penn 50SW's I bought years ago for $550 was lame out of the box. The drag was jerky and contaminated with grease and had to be replaced. It still is irritatingly loud when you turn the handle and makes noises in free spool. Despite this is still functions well and has landed big fish.

[r.waddill]

Wow is there a web site?? For the reel company? I wonder if they will be in Miami

[Re-Bait]

Where are they made?