My old faithful Curado 101D has decided to make me look like a beginner baitcaster user...:( About every 4 or 5 casts it will backlash on me for no apparent reason. I have changed nothing as far as my tension, brakes, etc. It has been working fine throwing the baits I normally use on it, lipless cranks, manns baby minus-1's, etc. Cleaned it up a couple of months ago, bearings are good, tension pad not dimpled, spool looked fine. Spool is not over filled or underfilled. It is filled with braid with mono as a backing. I tried another spool with fluro on it and got the same backlash problem. I am scratching my head over this. I'm going to tear it down later today to see if their is anything obvious that might be causing this. I'm looking for suggestions as to what possible mechanical problems might be causing this. This reel has never given me problems in all the years I've had it. My thumb is edumacated and I'm very experienced using this reel.

I have a Curado that loves to mysteriously backlash.
I found that my tension knob comes loose without me touching it.
You might want to check that out.

Yep I thought of that while I was fishing and having the problem. Knob was set where I had adjusted it so the lure I was using would fall at the rate I wanted. I'm honestly puzzled at this point...maybe I angered the fishing reel gods or something...:)

does it have a magnetic brake on the opposite side of the handle?

I have had 2 of the little plastic doohickeys on the side of my winchs suddenly fall off. have to take the side cover off and put them back, some day I will remember to order some new.

Nah hop it's an old school 101D...it's been my rock solid reel for years. Got me puzzled but I'm tearing ti down to check everything out....probably something simple...I hope...:)

Take rubbing alcohol and clean the brass raceway inside the non handle side plate,apply one small drop of oil on a q tip and run it around there. Sometimes the brass brake ring will get a small layer of plastic from the brake weights if it’s had quite a few casts made on it. Also you may need a new set of the plastic centrifugal brake weights installed as over time the tips of them will get warped. I used to have the same issues with all of my shimano reels with the old style VBS braking system, 99.9% of the time doing this to my reels would fix it.