Abu 6000 multiplier question

[lucky]

I'd appreciate it if someone could explain to me the difference between an Abu 6000 and an Abu 6500 multilplier. I picked up a basically brand new Abu 6000 reel quite cheaply on ebay a few months ago to use as a spare in case anyone else fancied coming fishing occassionally. It appears to be exactly the same as my 6500C3 with the same line capacity (14lb/245 yd) and gear ratio (5.3:1) and features such as star drag, thumb rest, line out alarm and level wind. The only difference I can see is that one, the 6000, is red ( in fact all the 6000s I've ever seen are red) and the other one, the 6500, is silver. The 6000 has got "Made in Sweden" clearly stamped into the side plate so it appears it's not just a cheaper version manufactured in China or somewhere else that has lower labour costs. It certainly seems to be manufactured to the same high standard as my 6500C3. I haven't got the reel with me at the moment and can't remember for sure whether it's a C3 or a C4 but from memory I'm pretty sure it's a C3 however this really doesn't make any difference as the 6500s are found both in C3 and C4 versions anyway. So what's the difference?

Also to further confound things I can find no mention whatsoever of a 6000 reel in either the C3 of C4 sections of the Abu Garcia web site - actually I've just remembered now what the reel is - the 6000 reel is designated a 6000C so maybe there's a difference in the bearings between the 6000C and 6500C3.

There is also one slight difference between the two reels in that my 6500 has a brass coloured spool and star drag but it's a fairly old reel. The newer 6500s have a silver coloured aluminium spool exactly the same as my 6000.

It hasn't really concerned me at all up to now as the 6000 seems to be an extremely good reel which I picked up at a pretty good price for an as-new Abu but someone asked this question over on another fishing forum and so prompted me to do the same over here. I certainly won't loose any sleep over it if no-one knows the answer however it would be interesting to find out the difference between the reels if there is indeed any at all. Maybe it was just a version made for a specific market abroad which has now been discontinued?

I'm sure some of you will be familiar with these red Abu 6000C reels. They pop up pretty regularly on ebay.

[lucky]

Actually I may have somehow stumbled on to the difference myself and answered my own question. It seems that the Abu 6000C has outboard bearings located in the end caps while the Abu 6500C3 has inboard bearings located in the spool. I think each reel may also use different size bearings too. From digging around on the Internet I get the impression that the 6000C has been a pretty popular reel in the States for many years (you see a lot of them on US ebay) and possibly Abu were reluctant to phase the model out when they introduced new model reels onto the market with the new bearing setup. Maybe someone can confirm this. I'm pretty sure now that I'm correct about the bearing setup being different though.