Mitchell 410 Question

[Wayne B.]

I was gifted two beautiful Mitchell 410's. One turns like new, the other sluggish. I opened it up expecting loads of old hardened grease but it was clean and looked like it had been cleaned recently and well lubricated with light grease. Everything turns freely until it is closed up. Still sluggish.

Does the screw in the end of the body have anything that could be causing this problem? What is the purpose of that screw?

[jr.evansii]

The screw on the back of the case is actually a lube port.

J.

[spadej1]

Wayne it could be a gearing issue or it could be a shim problem. Someone may have put the shims back together in the wrong place and or your gears aren’t meshing right. Try taking the shims out and seeing if it spins better. Tommy may have better suggestions.

[Midway Tommy D]

It's more than likely a shim issue. Mitchells were, & are still, notorious for shims. You never know where you might find one, but a lot were used in the rotor area, also. Many an unknowledgeable & unsuspecting owner let them disappear during a cleaning and relube. I've heard dozens of stories of guys finding one they didn't know was there stuck to another part. I haven't worked on a lot of them but the one I have taken apart have had multiple shims. The guys that work on them all the time usually have multiple thicknesses of shims and keep switching them around until they find the right combination. The one thing I do know for sure is you can't use one reel as a guide for another one because there was too much variation in size control of parts. Mitchell turned out an awful lot of reels so their molds would get a little worn every now & then.

[Shellbelly]

And I thought it was my inability to work on Mitchell reels. I never considered a manufacturing issue. Interesting.

[Phil M.]

Shell: The main gear may have a shim between it and the frame. The oscillating gear that moves the axle (and spool) in and out may also have a shim underneath it, which should be no thicker than .004 of an inch. When either or both of these gears have too much shim they rub against each other when the side plate screws are tightened. It's rare that a main gear would need more than .008 inch of shim and most oscillating gears use no shim at all.
Another possibility would be too much shim under the pinion gear, which drives the rotor. The normal amount of shim between the pinion and frame would be between .008 and .024 of an inch, a rather large window. Shims come in .004, .006, .008, .012 (rare) and .016 of an inch. Anyone dealing with shims needs a micrometer; doesn't need to be the best one in the world. It eliminates so much guesswork and wasted time that there is no alternative.

[Wayne B.]

Thanks for all the comments and suggestions. I know when I am over my head so I sent it out for repair by our Mitchell guru.