This Page Is Dedicated to Gowge For The Unending Inspiration He Has Given Me In Modifying Penn Reels.

1st up is a Penn 350 levelwind,these are getting hard to find and a very decent reel that holds about 300 yards of 30lb mono line.the spool will also fit a penn 200 surfmaster as well.

On the last page i showed how to use aluminum sheet to make  a cycolac spool work just fine with a magnet addition .you may use that method or an aluminum spooled reel with these mods.

In this pic you see the 350's bridge plate with what has a crescent shaped magnet glued to it.this is 1,.5" x 5,8" wide and one32' thick..this one mag i had pulled from a hard drive from a computer but i have seen other neodium crescent shaped magnets on the net,just do a search for surplus neodium magnets and start surfing sites to match this one up.i did find one sight that has them but they were 0,80" thick and i am unsure if it will work for this job as i never measured the gap between inner spool and bridge plate with clay.  http://www.wondermagnet.com/dev/magnets.html is one who has this style but may be too thick and the have the round and sqaure mags shown in below pix.

i had used 2 part epoxy on the mag,one dot on the center and one to either side on the mag itself,install it and let it cure up good.make sure to alcohol degrease the surfaces well first before epoxying it up.here is a pic of a worn yet still mechanically perfect penn 350 that is now backlash free.this mag shown lets the spool spin 3-5 seconds tops when i spin it by hand.

Here is a 140 penn squidder
This one has been modified using Lee Vallys rod magnets and cup washers.the magnets are 1/4"x1/4" in the cups which are glued in place as you see here shown.with very light machine oil in the bearings and 4 mags arranged n-s-n-s i am getting 4-5 seconds of spin time when i spin the spool.a bit thicker oil such as 3-1 or hoppes gun oil would slow it even more to 2-3 seconds spin time or you could variate the polarity on the mags to increase the spin time but then backlash lift on the line might occur but still be minimal.i like to cast thumb free off the spool tho with 2 to 6 ounce jigs,bait rigs and plugs.you can get theyre mags here, http://www.leevalley.com/ they also have short1/4" x1/16" mags and cups if you want for doing the penn 350,155 and 200 casting reels this style of addition to fine tune it.you can take a piece of clay and make a ball and then install the spool on the frame and measure it and add a small washer or shim under the mag cup for the most spool braking of the eddy current as its generated when spinning.just leave enough room so that when you adjust the spool tensioner you have a very slight side to side play knock for complete spool freespool,remember the mags will be doing the work from now on,not the tensioner.remember to degrease the inner side plate before gluing in the mags!.

A 200 penn surfmaster approach.
here all i did was take one round and one sqaure magnet,glue them together and then glued them in place on the sideplate as shown with no shim.this setup when i spin the spool gets me 2 to 3 seconds of spin time with a hard spin on the spool.no shim just an aluminum spool with less than 1/32" freespace between spool and magnet.note that the larger round magnet is offset and pushed over the copper clicker spring,this is to provide room for the spool and make a nice large eddy current to slow it down when the spool is spinning.the mags are 1/2" x 1/16 round and the sqaure one is 3/8" x 1/8".these are from magnet folks http://www.wondermagnet.com/dev/magnets.html .here you may also use the shorter 1/4"x1/16" mags and washer cups for adjusting the reel here as well in a series of 6 to 8 mags and cups loacated around the clicker spring if wanted or use the adjuster screw bushing method i described on the other page with 3 round 3/8" x 1/16" mags...