my complaint about the shimano trinidad and torium reels has always been the drag system and the anti-reverse system. well, the carbontex drag washers from smoothdrag.com and cal's grease totally fixed the drag problem. the anti-reverse roller bearing and ambassaduer-style pawl (dog), however, still posed a risk of failure and personal injury. if i was going to fix that, i would use a stack of two anti-reverse roller bearings in line and add a spring for the pawl. well, i actually found that in a shimano reel. this is a little embarassing, but i never had a clue. the guys on bloody decks had mention this before, but i guess i must be working on the poor side of town. the incredibly expensive shimano trinidad 20 DC had never crossed my bench until recently. look what i found!
that's right, the shimano trinidad 20 DC has greased carbon fiber drag washers. but there's more. it also has a spring loaded pawl.
and finally, it has a double height anti-reverse roller bearing and inner tube!
well, with this inspiration (and a dog send to me by a guy on bloodydecks!), i finally decided to try in on a torium. here is the trinidad dc pawl spring.
here is the ambassaduer-style pawl that comes stock with the torium (and the standard trinidads).
you can see already how the pawl is damaged. the anti-reverse roller bearing in this reel is totally shot, so the pawl is doing all of the work.
the ambassaduer-style spring actually peels off fairly easily. then you can use a standard mill bastard file to clean up all of the burrs.
lay the spring flat.
now here's the tricky part. there is a little bit of a gap underneath the pawl that allows your new dog spring to get stuck. to avoid this, i added a shimano washer that i pulled out of my junk box and used this washer to shim the pawl. now the spring will not get stuck.
ok, now this washer is critical. without it, the pawl spring gets caught underneath the pawl and the pawl gets jammed in the "up and away" position. that means it won't work at all. i THINK that this washer is from the shimano tld 15. it should be spacer A, part #TLD 0047. i have to check the next TLD that comes in to make sure. i did not think to use the trinidad dc pawl that i already had. i will have to try that on the next reel.
install the pawl.
install the anti-reverse pawl keeper.
install the anti-reverse ratchet and your new spring loaded dog system is complete!
so there you have it, your clicking torium. the trinidad DC pawl and pawl spring is a drop in fix for the regular Trinidads and Toriums. part #s 1304 spring, and 1303 pawl. no washer is required.
