Torque 100 not as advertised!

[nelz]

I was doing my first maintenance on my Penn Torque 100 and noticed two features that are not as advertised.

1) There is no "double dog" anti-reverse backup as claimed. There is only one dog, and no place to add a second, so the parts were not left out accidentally at the factory.

2) Pinion gear does not appear to be steel, it is yellow in color, like bronze or brass???

Alan, from your experience, is this the way these normally are, or did I get a factory second or something? I bought it on clearance since these now discontinued. I bought this reel expecting both of these features and am disappointed.  

Thanks for your input.

[Squirmypug]

Sorry to hear it is not like you thought it should be, I just bought a torque 300 and it has the steel gears and also double dogs.Maybe the double dogs and steel gears are only on the 200 and 300?I don't know how else that would happen 

[Bryan Young]

Unfortunately, buying reels is like buying a wrapped gift and hoping the insides are as good as you think.  Sharing this information will, in the end, help us consumers with knowing what our hard earned money is buying.

[Roger]

I seen this thread last night but it was getting late. So this morning I pulled up the schematic and checked it out. The schematic clearly just shows just one AR dog (15-200T) while the parts list has two required in it's listing. OOPS, Penn made a boo boo.....  My son has a 300 and I know it's got two dogs and a steel pinion.

[nelz]

Yes, I looked at the schematic on Penn's website and saw the single dog as well. Looks like they updated the parts list though, it doesn't say 2 required any more.

I'm really more ticked off about the pinion though, I really wanted, expected and paid for steel. I wrote Penn a note on their site, let's see what they say. All the ads for these reels make no mention of the 100 being an exception to those features.

Well, regardless of all this though, it's still a SWEET reel and more that enough to handle what I catch.

[nelz]

Maybe the double dogs and steel gears are only on the 200 and 300?

Yep, looks that way. Would have been nice if they actually mentioned it somewhere! 

[nelz]

I just looked on the box it came in: EVEN THERE IT SAYS "double dog" anti-reverse backup!!! AND stainless steel main and pinion gears. Wow.

[alantani]

just finished servicing one of these.  very nice reel.  the single dog should work just fine. 

[nelz]

It's very nice, yes, but even the box makes false claims about it, and these are major features.

Here's the pics:

http://favoritereels.blogspot.com/2011/04/torque-100.html

[alantani]

oh, now i know what you mean!  yes, i do believe that you do have a stainless steel pinion gear.  find a non-critical part of the gear and scratch it.  you should find stainless steel under the colored finish.  i believe that the finish is there for additional corrosion resistance.  i have seen pinion gears like that before.  many stainless steel bearings also have corrosion resistant finishes of different colors. 

[alantani]

great post, by the way, and thank you.  at some point, i would like to move this over the penn board.  it will not get buried as fast over there.  alan

[nelz]

Thanks Alan, I'm honored! 

Btw, I'd like to hear from anyone who's seen a 200 or 300 pinion, I wonder if it looks the same?

[nelz]

Ok, so I got a reply from Penn.

Alan, you were right about the pinion. Here's what they said: "The Pinions for all 1st generation models are stainless and heat treated, the heat treating is basically cooking the gear to make it harder, which is where it gets the yellowish color."

As for the dogs, they confirmed that the TRQ100 only has 1 dog, however no explanation was given as to the ads or box claiming 2 dogs.

Well, enough of this already, now I just need to catch a big one with this awesome little reel.

[slip tip]

Nelz, it MIGHT be on the original run of the reels it had two dogs; afterwards the "engineers" figured it was over kill and changed it to the single dog. Then off course, no one told the printing dept. of the change. Just a guess....

Regards,
David