I received the last pieces I needed to assembly my reel in the mail on Monday, and went ahead and put it together Monday evening. Here are the upgrade parts I installed:
- Tiburon frame and spool (which I had already been using with standard Penn components)
- Tom's plates and goodie bag
- SS gear sleeve
- Alan C's SS double dog bridge
- Keta's lug blanks
- Adam's drag insert kit and drag star
Here is the assembled reel:
It still has stock gears and a Penn 24-349H handle. I think the gears will probably last quite a long time, and I prefer the 3.25 gear ratio rather than something higher. A handle upgrade would look good and I may do that at some point, but I find the throw length of this handle to be perfect for me, and the grip feels good in my hand.
I was able to get 28 lb of drag, tested on my drag scale. I could get about 21.5-22 with the stock drag washers, so it is a noticeable increase. I intend to fish it at 18-20 lb anyway.
The reel went together without a hitch. The only "tuning" I needed to perform was a bit of light filing on the inside of the thick top washer that came with the drag insert kit. It was a little too tight to slide over the SS gear sleeve that I used, but a few strokes of a file cured that, and it is still a nice tight fit.
It is great that all these upgrades are available to us. Thank you to Tom, Alan C, Adam & Keta for making these upgrade parts, and also Sal and others for the part testing and innovations, and of course Alan T for making this all possible!
