# off-road toad pretty cool!



## Williwoods (May 3, 2004)

I really need to stop buying bike bits and get a digi cam so I can share my aquisitions. but if I had bought a camera I would have not had enough money to buy a new bike. I picked up an off road toad on craigslist and it sure is cool. I promise to post pics by tomorrow. Its a 95/96 best I can tell really fat tubing tange prestige. awesome dropouts aluminum bolted on to these really thin dropout plates. it seems so slow steering compared to my bontrager. I have a 70mm fork on her maybe it was meant for a 60mm fork. the frame is stiff!!!!!! yeah bontragers are a bit whippy. anyway im not sure what im going to do with it. I am kinda torn between keeping her or selling her so I can get a ti bontrager. The toad is just a little too stretched out and slow handling for me, I need to ride some more. maybe i could run the dirt drops on her since the frame has this gigantic headtube. it looks like 700c wheels would fit in there plenty of room. anyway not to turn this into a whats it worth thread but I have not seen any frames on ebay or anywhere else so does someone know what a toad went for on the bay? Its not like I could easily find out so please be kind.

we need more toad pictures the ones posted arent enough!!!


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## j333ssa (Oct 12, 2004)

Hey fella

Jez here.

Still love to see the pics of the Toad - send them to me on retrobike mate.

Appreciated


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## Williwoods (May 3, 2004)

j333ssa said:


> Hey fella
> 
> Jez here.
> 
> ...


I am going to make a page for myself on retrobike this week to permanantly immortilize my goods. I need to start taking pictures really bad man I wish I had pics of some of my bikes from long ago. anyway i'll send the links your way or you can see them here tomorrow.

Will


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## lebikerboy (Jan 19, 2005)

Here's a Toad thread you should see...

http://forums.mtbr.com/showthread.php?t=4153&highlight=Off+Road+Toad


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## Fillet-brazed (Jan 13, 2004)

Williwoods said:


> I really need to stop buying bike bits and get a digi cam so I can share my aquisitions. but if I had bought a camera I would have not had enough money to buy a new bike. I picked up an off road toad on craigslist and it sure is cool. I promise to post pics by tomorrow. Its a 95/96 best I can tell really fat tubing tange prestige. awesome dropouts aluminum bolted on to these really thin dropout plates. it seems so slow steering compared to my bontrager. I have a 70mm fork on her maybe it was meant for a 60mm fork. the frame is stiff!!!!!! yeah bontragers are a bit whippy. anyway im not sure what im going to do with it. I am kinda torn between keeping her or selling her so I can get a ti bontrager. The toad is just a little too stretched out and slow handling for me, I need to ride some more. maybe i could run the dirt drops on her since the frame has this gigantic headtube. it looks like 700c wheels would fit in there plenty of room. anyway not to turn this into a whats it worth thread but I have not seen any frames on ebay or anywhere else so does someone know what a toad went for on the bay? Its not like I could easily find out so please be kind.
> 
> we need more toad pictures the ones posted arent enough!!!


Sure is a small world. I had just called Steve to see if I could buy this very bike and from what he told me you were there buying it when I called. 

Looks like a neat one.


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## hollister (Sep 16, 2005)

pics!!


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## moonter (Oct 14, 2004)

hollister said:


> pics!!


Aye. Pics!!


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## Williwoods (May 3, 2004)

Fillet-brazed said:


> Sure is a small world. I had just called Steve to see if I could buy this very bike and from what he told me you were there buying it when I called.
> 
> Looks like a neat one.


That is funny I handed him the cash and he had to go in the house to answer a call that must have been you. Did you offer him twice what I paid? When he came back from the call, I think he regreted selling it to me for the price, but he already accepted my money so........ I think he wanted to go back and increase his asking price, after getting so many calls, I admit I got a sick deal. To make you feel better there is one thing wrong with the bike,the rear rim is cracked on the drive side spokes. Oh well, those citron rims were sweet gonna build the lime kings with some valiants better rims anyway. Did you ask him about his other goods? I wont say exactly but theres gold in that garage. He's a super nice guy too. Nice to hear I was battling against another member here on the board. Its a small world in the vintage mtb crowd.

and people the pics are coming.........just give me abiut an hour or so.

Will


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## Williwoods (May 3, 2004)

*Pics!!!!!!*


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## Williwoods (May 3, 2004)




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## Williwoods (May 3, 2004)

can anyone give me some idea how to photograph this bike better? its hard to see but the paint is sparkly. this photo business is tough man. Sky and rumphy your pics are always so nice how do I do that?


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## j333ssa (Oct 12, 2004)

Thats real nice


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## Rumpfy (Dec 21, 2003)

Williwoods said:


> can anyone give me some idea how to photograph this bike better? its hard to see but the paint is sparkly. this photo business is tough man. Sky and rumphy your pics are always so nice how do I do that?


Send the bike up to me and I'll show you. :smilewinkgrin:

I'm no where close to being very good with a camera (only have a little Canon A75), and I still take my fair share of crappy pics...but I'm learning as I go.
Here's what I find helps.

Natural light, but not direct light. The best times of the day would be early in the morning or right around sunset/afternoon.

With the lower light your camera may want to go to auto flash. What you'll have to do is turn off the flash feature and get that camera on a tri pod so it sits still (so the pics don't end up blurry).

In mid day sun light, there are a lot of shadows and reflections. If you're indoors with low light, with the flash, you get a lot of feedback and the pics only come out so so. If it's too dark and the flash is off...blurry pics.

The other thing that helps is if your camera has a macro feature to get nice detail close up shots.

For example: Indoors, ugly background. Yeah the whole bike is in the shot, but you can see the flash glare on the top tube. Dull, boring picture.









Here I turned off the flash and put the camera on a tri pod. Hell, even use a 5 second delay timer for the camera...just make sure it doesn't move while it's taking the picture. Macro feature is on to get a nice, focused shot of what I want. Back ground probably isn't the best to have...but its obvious what the focus is here.









And a little different with a more neutral background. What I want is in focus in the front of the picture...the other pair of brakes slightly out of focus.









Just my most humble, unprofessional, $.02


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## colker1 (Jan 6, 2004)

willy.. you say it's slow handling but the tubing sticker, the laid back seatangle and the long headtube tell me this is NOT a susp corrected frame. slap an answer accutrax up front and hit the steep, rutted, rocky, slippery singletrack.
the bike is stiff so you can be precise.


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## Williwoods (May 3, 2004)

colker1 said:


> willy.. you say it's slow handling but the tubing sticker, the laid back seatangle and the long headtube tell me this is NOT a susp corrected frame. slap an answer accutrax up front and hit the steep, rutted, rocky, slippery singletrack.
> the bike is stiff so you can be precise.


I am about to set the englunds to 63mm. The guy I got it from said it came with a bontrager comp fork..........................his friend got ahold of it or it would already be on the bike. actually I would have mounted it on my 91 race ss. but yeah something has to happen with that fork.


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## colker1 (Jan 6, 2004)

Williwoods said:


> I am about to set the englunds to 63mm. The guy I got it from said it came with a bontrager comp fork..........................his friend got ahold of it or it would already be on the bike. actually I would have mounted it on my 91 race ss. but yeah something has to happen with that fork.


what yr is the bike? that tange sticker looks early 90s. i read a test done by olsen on mountain biking w/ a toad in 91. it was a diff tange tubing, prestige. anyways.. it came w/ the accutrax fork which i believe has short rake just like the bontrager. the handling was said to be perfect. a technical singletrack bike. a vancouver ride.


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## Williwoods (May 3, 2004)

colker1 said:


> what yr is the bike? that tange sticker looks early 90s. i read a test done by olsen on mountain biking w/ a toad in 91. it was a diff tange tubing, prestige. anyways.. it came w/ the accutrax fork which i believe has short rake just like the bontrager. the handling was said to be perfect. a technical singletrack bike. a vancouver ride.


this bike is prestige. Its just bi-ovalized on the seattube and downtube. It could be as early as 94. The guy had loads of racing pics from back in the day one pic had him racing this bike with a manitou 2 fork up front (what year would that be?) I should have asked more questions from the seller but I was a bit overwhelmed. sometimes the obvious questions dont come to mind when your in love

If I find an accutrax with long enough threads or a bonty fork I would have to re-do the whole build as and accutrax with 950 shimano just seems wrong. I would turn the clock back to pre v brake days. So for now its gonna have to be a 63mm fork instead


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## colker1 (Jan 6, 2004)

it's begging for a rigid fork. problem is finding one w/ that amount of steerer..


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## Williwoods (May 3, 2004)

colker1 said:


> it's begging for a rigid fork.


I thought I was hearing voices, glad its not just me. man that is loud (canadian voice) "I need an accutrax, I need a bontrager comp, I need a gator blade, for crying out loud i'll even take one of those crummy switchblades eh! whatever you do just get this pogo stick offa me hoser!!!!!!"


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## hollister (Sep 16, 2005)

its all about interesting backrounds


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## Boy named SSue (Jan 7, 2004)

Williwoods said:


> I thought I was hearing voices, glad its not just me. man that is loud (canadian voice) "I need an accutrax, I need a bontrager comp, I need a gator blade, for crying out loud i'll even take one of those crummy switchblades eh! whatever you do just get this pogo stick offa me hoser!!!!!!"


Must have been a fake Canadian accent because it left oooot Syncros.

Sweet bike. Very sweet.


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## rhett101 (Apr 17, 2004)

Great find. Canadian bike are cool.

..but don't ask me I'm bias.


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## GonaSovereign (Sep 20, 2004)

Thanks for showing me your Toad. So nice. What part of the world are you in? SoCal? We can't find these things up in their home and native land...


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## jakirk (Nov 10, 2009)

*cool toad*

I used to know the guy that built them, his name was Rod Kirkham and he ran a small performance mtn bike shop in the 80's located in Vancouver. The frame was probably sold for about $1000 give or take, depending on the paint job.:thumbsup:


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## jakirk (Nov 10, 2009)

*IRD Interlock Racing Designs*

a toad deserves a decent ridgid fork


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## Roadsters (Jul 7, 2008)

jakirk said:


> I used to know the guy that built them. His name was Rod Kirkham and he ran a small performance mountain bike shop in the 80s located in Vancouver.












Rod was a friend of mine as well. He's still in Vancouver. Here's a link to his shop.


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