So now the drive assembly was done, I cleaned the reel, sprayed it with WD40 and let it sit, then scraped it off with a thin paint scraper followed by a wire brush. There was actually still some red paint under there. I took out the sole plate, because there was all sorts of gunk scraping against the reel, gave it a scrub then a little wet and dry just to take the surface rust off. So it was all spinning smoothly now except for one little thing, which I'll get to next, and it drove me nuts trying to work it out. As well as that I found that the bottom blade had about a 1cm chip out of the corner at the left end, which is a total drag, but I'll deal with that down the road if I can find someone to fabricate me a new bottom blade. I mean, how hard can it be?
