My successful Click spring repair for Summits

[Reelman2]

I have 2 -2nd version Summits that both had the click spring broken. Since there is really no way to actually fix them I decided to replace them. Since the spring is not actually nickel silver I decided to take one out of a non silver Pflueger reel and replace the broken one. Since the spring assembly is riveted on I just ground off the flat part of the rivets and pried the rest of it off. This left studs or at least parts of one which are nickel silver so the front side of the plate is not changed. I had to ream out the holes a bit on the replacement and then set it over the studs or what was left of them. I then soldered them in place. Since I am not great at soldering, it looks a little sloppy but it works. Once I put the rear plate back on you will never know it was broken. The first pic shows a before and the second pic shows the after.

[Teal]

Nice job! Love those early Summits.

-- Dr. Todd

[kyreels]

Looks great to me! What equip and solder type exactly do you use for this?

[Reelman2]

For this particular project I used Harris Stay Brite Solder. It is available on line. I have used it in the past to fix holes in feet but it doesn't have much silver in it so it tends to yellow and show where the hole was. But for this project I used the Stay Brite which will not show since it is on the inside. I just acquired some harder silver solder which has more silver in it but I haven't had much luck getting it to melt right for some reason. I used a torch to melt the solder on this project.

[kyreels]

I always had trouble too, wanted to try something with the yellow fuel (hotter) and a finer point. Looking for an excuse to try this:

[Ron Mc]

When I had to fabricate a new phosphor-bronze click-spring for my Talbot Niangua...
shown here before cutting to final length
... I used a low-temperature solder, flux, and a micro-torch built to use disposable lighters.
The flux didn't keep, though, decomposed after a year. But the joint on the spring block is perfect.

[Paul Roberts]

Nice to see an old quality reel up and running again.