TLD 5 Modifications

[Rothmar2]

Just thought I would share some mods I've done to a little TLD 5 a bought recently.
The motivation was to optimise it for 4kg line to chase some light tackle records.

Things to be done included changing the drag curve beyond strike so as not to come on "too strong".
I wasn't happy with the amount of back-play of the anti-reverse dog, so I added another.
Drop in a carbontex drag washer (on the way from Dawn. Thank you!)

To tackle the first problem, I made up a brass mandrel to support the drag lever so as to accurately measure the drag cam. Then measured the lift of the cam in total, and the measurement at "Strike". If you look closely I notched the outside of the lever to keep track of where I was, and to keep consistency across both side of the cam.





Strike........



Once I had that established I knew that I wanted to decrease the maximum cam lift to about 0.25mm, from 0.40mm.

I made the mandrel guide removable so I could clamp down some emery discs cut with a set of concentric hole punches, so I could mill down the ends of the cam to get the desired maximum lift.







I carefully checked the reduction in lift after every few rubs (using the drag lever to oscillate back and forth to sand away the cam 'high" spot). I finished the cam off with some 800 wet and dry.

Once I was happy with the measurement, I checked the drag on a set of Brouz drag checkers. For a strike setting of 1.3kg, going to full with the modified cam (0.25mm) gave 2.2kg. I'm not exactly sure of what the full 0.40mm produced as full drag, but it was enough to pop 4kg line.

Next was the extra dog.

I machined up a stainless dog post, a brass "dummy" post to help with marking the location of the stainless post, and filed out the dog from a piece of 3mm thick stainless. Measuring the height of the original post gave me a height of about 3.5mm to work with under the gear.



I made the brass flange slightly wider than the stainless one to give a slight margin of error in case of a drill fault.





I then used the dummy post to scribe an arc inside the gear housing to give me a line to estimate the final dog's position. It also allowed me to test fit the filed out dog, I wanted the dog to have slight "gravity assistance". Once I felt I was getting close, I made a mock up of the A/R ratchet from brass, so as to check for final fit, and to make sure the dogs we out of phase enough to reduce the handle back-play, ie reduce it by half







Once I was happy I was real close, I drilled the side plate to take the locating spigot of the stainless dog, scuffed up the side-plate a little around the hole, on the underside of the dog-post, and carefully filed a few grooves into spigot with some needle files to help give some extra grip. The parts were then cleaned with a little contact cleaner, and then the dog-post was glued in with a mixture of epoxy and graphite powder, then clamped down and allowed to cure for a couple of days.







There was some more final touching up with the file to get the out of phase between the two dogs right, but once happy, the dog was given a bit of a rub down with some final wet and dry grades, and some polish to smooth everything right off.
A small hole was drilled (1mm) to located the end of the dog spring. An old stainless torsion spring was robbed from and old spin reel that was well and truly U/S, and modified to suit. I had to put in a small self tapper though, to help keep it all in place.







It's a little on the rough side, but it well and truly does the job.

Greased everything up once happy and ready to place the real drive gear in.
In order to spring the new dog out to allow the gear to settle right into place, I looped the end of a piece of line off the spool and pushed in the free-spool button and allowed the loop to get trapped under it. I then passed the line over the new dog and back out through one of the side-plate screw holes. This would allow me to spring the dog out to allow the gear to drop right in.



With the gear in place, hold the line that passes through the side-plate hole, and pull on the line as shown. At the same time trip the original dog and push the gear until it seats.



At this point it's a good idea to fit the handle being careful not to push the gear out so the dogs slip off, and you have to start all over again. It is a little fiddly, but it can be done.

Fitted the side-plate and the rest of the drag gear, and gave it a test. Was very pleased with the result.

Just waiting on the carbontex washer to arrive, and it should be pretty trick!

Thanks to you guys doing the 113H T4NKS for the inspiration for this project.

More information on the extra A/R dog......

http://alantani.com/index.php?topic=12332.0

[Alto Mare]

Impressive modification, Rothmar. Thanks for sharing it with us.
Sal

[Bryan Young]

For the love of reels, most definitely!!!  So very impressed.

[john2244]

Great work !!  Good luck with your light line tackle quest.

John

[Dazza-K]

Very nice work , the 20's and 25's can take a tyrnos handle, much better than the smaller handles , not sure if they fit the 5 ? 

[Rothmar2]

Cheers for the replies.

Dazza, have actually got a better handle for this reel from a Tica ST 16, that I beefed up and converted. Will post a pic up when I get back home and have it fitted. I agree, the stock handle is a little too short, and the grip too small.

[alantani]

very nice work.  for light drag applications, you can also use lighter bellevilles.

[Rothmar2]

Cheers for the tip Alan. But anyone know of a source for suitable bellevilles in Australia?
Buying parts like that from the reel parts suppliers in Australia is just over the top expensive.

[Rothmar2]

Got home a few days ago, Carbontex washer had arrived, and fitted the upgrade handle.
Now for the tuna to turn up again.

[gstours]

Kudo to you mr. rothmar;  I do too like what you did to the little reel, you certainly improved it,  and gave some of us more inspiration, to make a better world.   thanks  gst.

[Rothmar2]

Thanks GS, don't know about making a better world  , but I'm glad you get inspiration from this post. It makes the time to put a post together like this one worthwhile.

I have another post I'm putting together for this reel, its for the spool bearings sleeve, and trying to solve the "tilting to the right problem" for this series of reels. Should get it up soon.

Good fishing to you. Would love to get a salmon the size of the one in your Avatar.

[Bryan Young]

I am so very impressed with the talent of our members.

[Rancanfish]

The last TLD 5 I had I sold to Terry Lewis who held the 6lb test record for sturgeon, last I heard.

Nice upgrades.

[Rothmar2]

Digging up this old thread to show a little something I have added to this reel. As somebody else mentioned some other Shimano Cranks will fit this reel.
As a bit of a back-story, a while back I got a Torium in for service that the A/R was shot on, and the handle's soft rubber outer grip had stretched somewhat, and had split to the point that it was about to fall off. Brett (exp 2000) sourced a replacement handle/crank assembly, along with a few other parts to get the reel back up to scratch. The reel came up as new after the replacement parts were fitted. The reel's owner said "Do what you like with the old handle".
I noticed that the cut-out for the crank looked to be the same size as an original counter-balanced TLD 5 crank I had laying around. The handle/crank shown earlier in this thread that I had fitted from a Tica ST16 turned out to be a lemon, as the thread that screwed into the handle snapped off (fortunately not while fighting a fish), and rendered it useless.
I use this reel for light line trolling for tuna fishing, 4kg test is the line I have optimised the drag ramp for (as seen above). There has been a few long fights on this reel since the first up mods, and while there has been quite a few losses, there has been a few victories as well, but none that have been record breakers. Since the Tica handle broke, I have used the original, and have not really enjoyed using the reel for this style of fishing anywhere near as much. So I decided to modify the Torium handle to get the bigger handle I prefer.

First up was to drill into the bottom of the handle with a drill the same diameter as a section of a broken rod I had laying around, and glue it in with epoxy



Once that had cured, I wrapped some 4oz woven cloth , with epoxy to strengthen the join, and build up section thickness, to allow me to shape the grip into a comfortable shape. I didn't get any photos of this stage unfortunately. I also re-shaped the original handle core contours to allow my fingers to wrap around more naturally. I slightly overshaped the profile, as I planned to sheath the piece with Carbon Fibre to finish it. The sheathing process is similar to how i did the composite reel clamp on the Jigmaster Project. Here it is shaped and sheathed with CF (tip of the hat to Marq for the inspiration).



I then turned up a SS cap/counterweight to go in the end, to naturally keep the handle upright. The cap also had to be shaped off being perfectly circular, as by the time I had shaped the rest of the handle to fit the hand, it was nowhere near perfectly round. Once the cap was shaped to suit, the stem was roughed up, and then glued into the ID of the rod extension piece with epoxy.

And here it is finished, and fitted. There are a couple of extra coats of epoxy over the CF, and the epoxy also had to be built up in several places to tie it all together reasonably smooth. I could wet and dry finish it to be fair, but I can't be bothered and it feels OK in the hand as it is, and I don't want to risk a sand-through, and have to mix more epoxy to re-seal it.





And despite the weird shape, it actually fills, and feels great in the hand.



Looking forward to some long battles this up-coming season.

[Donnyboat]

Good work on both occasions, entertaining, thanks for sharing, cheers Don.