A look inside the design of the Quantum Aruba PTs (continued)
 

The Bearings: Shimano has A-RB bearings and Daiwa has CRBB bearings. Quantum's answer is their proprietary super bearings made out of Nitrogen-Alloy. The Aruba PTs houses five Nitrogen-Alloy PT bearings and although their exact composition is a classified, we were told that they are much more expensive and are ten times more corrosion resistant than standard stainless steel bearings.

A sealed Nitrogen-Alloy PT bearing that's ten times more corrosion resistant

Here’s what ChuckE, TackleTour’s resident bearing expert, had to say about Quantum’s Nitrogen-Alloy PT bearings:

“High nitrogen alloyed stainless steel has been around for a while. But the most popular alloy, SV-30, was commercially introduced in the mid 1980's. This alloy is noted for good resistance to salt water corrosion, while still providing similar wear and hardness of 440C Stainless, 440D Stainless and 42100 Steels. Early in 2000 GRW (a German bearing manufacturer), began to use SV-30 for the races of ceramic hybrid bearings, primarily for high temperature and corrosive environments. The bearings were initially used in turbochargers, vacuum sealing pumps, etc. but have since expanded into medical, food, aerospace and other applications. In some situations SV-30 does not resist wear quite as well as 440C, 440D or 42100, although it does resist Chloride related corrosion better than these others. On one hand I would have to say they will likely resist corrosion better than a conventional stainless bearings but without any detailed information from the bearing manufacturer we can only take a stab at the quality.”

Lever drag system provides accurate force

Indicators for Free, Strike, and Full drag settings

The Drag: Every component of a reel must work as one. If one part fails, it can halt operation. The drag must function flawlessly especially in a conventional reel when trolling for huge fish. The Quantum Aruba PTs saltwater reel employs a dual carbon drag system. Two large carbon-fiber disks produce up to 45 pounds of pressure at the striking position and up to 60 pounds in the full-on position.

The Aruba PTs uses carbon fiber discs

After taking apart the reel to inspect the drag system, I noticed the washer on the handle side is larger than the carbon-fiber disk on the other end. This doesn’t cause any issues because the system applies equal pressure to both sides even though the disks are not the same dimension.

The larger drag washer is on the handle side

Though we were unable to push the reel’s drag to the limits of 60 pounds of force, we did conduct a few tests in our lab to see just what kind of pressure we were able to achieve. Some companies actually test out their drags by hooking it up to a car and then letting it rip. We didn’t quite go that far as tests like those are rather destructive, and we do want to see what this reel will do in the real world before we unnecessarily stress the product. Below is a table of drag settings noting the following metrics: start up pressure (the force needed to get the drag moving); drag pressure (the maintainable force of the drag once in motion); smoothness (the quality of rotation once the drag is in motion under a constant pull).

The gear that's used to set the drag pressure from the non-handle side