308 trip lever not working

[Frankc]

Bail opens properly and locks in place for casting. Bail will not close unless you use your figure to release the trip lever manually. Trip lever spring seems ok. Any ideas…

[piscesman]

Either your trip is bent out of shape, busted end or the part under the rotor is worn down. Pull the spool off and open bail. Look down at trip mechanism and slowly rotate the rotor while looking at trip. See if the trip is pushed away from the spindle. If not, then you will need to remove trip lever and see if it is complete. If complete, I would suspect part under rotor. Hope this helps as I'm a 301 and larger fisherman except jigging in the winter.
Kim

[Frankc]

Thanks for the suggestions...

Did what you described and didn't see anything obviously wrong with the mechanism. I could not see the part under the rotor that you referred too (spindle?), but the trip itself looked fine; nothing broke, worn or bent... Decided to make another small adjustment on the trip lever spring when re-installing everything,and while I don't know if that was the problem or not the bail is working fine now.

Again, thanks for your support.

[don309]

I am rough on my reels. I have noticed on a few occasions, that my bail would not come back. But would if I didn't lock it in, the fix was either cleaning the non spring side of the bail wire (under the screw) and oil it.

[Schrack]

I am not familiar with This reel, but it could need shines where rotating housing is not making contact with triple lever will have to check schematics to verfied.

[Schrack]

Just looked at several schematics, seems to have only 1 shim which is on shaft head mounts, if this part is missing would cause head not to strike trip lever.
Most other Mitchell's have a head shim and shims under baffle plate.
If I owned one could tell you in a short.
Judging from schematic this is a different set up f or trip lever.
Sorry I could not be more help.

[Sandman]

Kim said it, "your trip is bent out of shape,"...This is the most common cause for the trip lever not moving enough upon engaging with the head to release the bail. A weak or misaligned trip lever spring would have opposite effect. A bail spring would do it, but that is obvious. Overtime, or by being jarred, these trip levers can lose their original shape and need to be bent back into shape. Typically, it takes very little bending to get the shape back to allow for correct tripping of the bail. Usually, I've been successful by using needle nose on the bail end of the trip lever while still installed...just a little bend at a time and test...the anti-intuitive part is that you have to bend the lever side-to-side, not up and down...sometimes a bit both ways...probably done this 20 times....make sure someone didn't install a later lever on an older reel...they are different and even though they are interchangeable, I've had some that weren't.

Sounds like you got it...

Sandman

[Bailarm]

If the spring is bent it can cause the arm that is struck as it rotates, thus closing the bail, to not sit correctly.

I've had this on a lot of 308 reels so I think it must be a common fault.

I took this image and added the text to help others:

Mitchell 308 & 408 bail rotor small.jpg (57.55 KiB) Viewed 5877 times