I've inherited a few dozen of old "Jake" Coyote traps that have seen hard use here trapping dingos.

Many of them have had their rubbers chewed upon or boiled brittle, which are easy enough to replace, but some seem to have worn the edges off either the pan or the notch on the jaw where it engages. The end result seems to be traps that either go off on their own if pan tension is less than 5lbs or cant be set at all.

Wondering if there are any tricks to solving this?

I've been pondering either taking a file to the pan and creating a sharp groove in it for the notch to engage in, or pulling the rubber out of the jaw and pushing the notch out further by hitting it with a nail punch, and then reshaping it with a file. Is there any quick fix I'm overlooking?

It depends on how beat up they are, pics would help.

Hey gbe , pm sent

Long story short, ended up buying new pans for these and in the process learnt a few tricks.

The 3/8th's bolt the pan pivots on is held in place by a 7/16th's bolt up through the baseplate. The latter has just enough play to allow the pan to be adjusted forward and back enough to make a firm engagement or none at all once the pan is worn. I now have a set of working traps and a few pans with a date with a dremel or saw blade to recut the groove and then be fitted back as close to the jaws as possible via careful tightening of the 7/16th's bolt.