New owner here

[Jonjohnson90]

Hey guys, just picked up a 75 road toad. Havent really spent much time with her yet but she needs a little work. Not currently running but has comp and spark. Im guessing a good crab cleaning/adjustment with new fuel and lines will do the trick.... bike has been sotting awhile. Curious about a few things. Is there a battery? Where do i put the oil? And how fast will this thing move with 200 lbs of me on it?

[Dale]

Welcome to the group. The Road Toad is a great little bike. Don't expect to cruise highway speeds though. I would say cruising speed with a 200 lb rider would be around 45 and peak at around 50. Plus or minus depending on gearing and condition.

Battery? Yes, there should be a 6 volt battery behind the green side cover that has a decal "100".

Oil?
There are 2 oil requirements. One, is the gearbox. It holds 20 ounces of gear lube. A popular choice is Bel-Ray 80W Gear Saver. Be aware that the drain plug will only drain 14 to 16 ounces. The clutch cover needs to be removed in order to get all of the old oil drained.

The second oil is the gas mix. The Road Toad came with an oil injection pump. Many Toads have been modified to run pre-mix and have had the oil tank and pump removed. If there, you would have a black plastic oil tank with a long filler neck between the seat and the exhaust pipe. It would have a rubber cap and dip stick. You will also find the oil line going into the right side case to the oil pump behind the small cover. And an oil output line coming out and running up to a banjo bolt on the intake manifold. If you have the oil pump in place, a popular oil is Yamalube 2S. If you do not have the oil pump, then a pre-mix is required. A popular choice for pre-mix is Yamalube 2R mixed at 32:1 with NON-Ethanol gas.

Have fun!
Dale

[viclioce]

Welcome to the forum! I'm amid a restore of a 1975 Model 99 Road Toad! It's a nice, low bike with smaller rims. The front is a 19" and the rear is a 17".

You can get the bike on the road and up to about 55 mph if you gear the Toad properly. It is, after all, just a 98cc motor. But if you run a 15 tooth countershaft sprocket and something around a 45 rear sprocket, you might be able to get it up to around 60 mph. But you'd be running it wide open for extended periods which I wouldn't do. Also changing the rear rim to an 18" will give you a little more top end and probably a better selection for tires. Just be careful to not have fender rubbing if you do! But the smaller rear sprocket will yield some loss of low end pulling power.

These bikes were built for on/off road riding with the emphasis more on off road. Get her running well first, then decide what its primary use will be. Since the bike is 41 years old, I would suspect it has dried out seals. I would split the cases and replace the seals, bearings and bushings in the bottom end and possibly do a refresh of the top end with a bore with new rings and piston. This way, the motor will be sound and give you it's best performance.

You can choose to go pre mix or oil injected. The latter requires the oil tank, a functional oil pump and the throttle with dual cables for both the oil pump and the carb/fuel. There is a oil delivery tube which runs from the tank to the pump and from the pump to the intake manifold with a banjo bolt on top of the manifold. If this is missing, it may have already been converted to premix. Premix is fine, it just means you need to carry extra 2 stroke oil with you somewhere on the bike, like a small plastic bottle in the tool box, which you can add to the tank when adding more fuel.

Try to get ethanol free fuel and go with premium in the 90+ octane rating. When these bikes were built, regular gas was leaded, had no ethanol and regular octane gas was typically 92 octane!

Finally, pull the carb and the intake manifold with the reed valves inside. Make sure the reeds are not frayed or cracked and that they sit flat and level with the reed holder around their edges. If they don't meet these requirements, order a new set of reeds. Make sure your pilot jet is clean, your main jet is clean and also your choke plunger, along with the needle valve and all the airways. As an FYI, your stock pilot jet is a 30, your stock main jet is a 160 and I believe the stock carb slide is a 1.5.

Yes, the bike uses a 6 volt battery, which mounts in a battery holder under the seat. The ignition switch mounts to it on the left side and there is the battery cover on the right with the "100" decal on the right side. A new battery is around $36.95 plus shipping. It comes ready to fill and you need a 6 volt charger to bring it up to full charge after filling it. Do NOT use a 12 volt charger unless it can be switched to 6 volt! Otherwise you could blow up your battery. I also convert all my main fuse holders from glass tube fuses to plastic blade fuses. Simple to do and you can carry spare fuses without worry of them braking.

Our forum host, Strictly Hodaka, offers most of what you'll need. The rest you may be able to find by searching on eBay, or asking here for other resources.

Good luck and let us know how it goes! ; D Victor

[viclioce]

If you find you need to bore and put a new piston in the motor, the Road Toad piston is getting more difficult to find. Paul advised me just a day or two ago that he doesn't have any more of the ART pistons for it, but does have Wiseco Pistons for it. Also a reasonable alternative is the reed valve piston for the Super Rat 100. He still has these in stock too. ; D Victor

[socalhodaka]

Jon, welcome to the group. Let me give you a few good tips to get the best help here.
Let us know what area your from, as there is a good chance another Hodaka Club member lives near by or another Hodaka nut. Take some clear photos of the bike from all angles, this will help the help to assess the project. Get a manual or even the parts book, or look at the part diagram of your bike on the Strictly Hodaka site to get familar with parts and stuff . Join the Hodaka Club as you will have access to all the back issues of the Resonator newsletter that has a ton of how to articles.

Kelly

[---]

In 1903, Glen Curtiss set a speed record of 64 mph on a 1,000cc motorcycle. To ask a 98cc bike to carry a 200 pound rider to 60 is asking a lot, but I suppose it is possible. The problem is that gearing is a form of mechanical advantage given to the engine so as to overcome inertia. The more you change gearing to achieve higher speed, the less advantage the engine has in doing its job. There is a point of diminishing returns in gearing a bike or any other vehicle if all you change is the gearing. If you change the final drive ratio so that, mathematically, you would get 60mph at top listed rpm, you will also have reduced the engines ability to achieve the rated rpm.

Way back in '71, when my Ace was still a 100cc bike, I could use the road sprocket on the back and get all 150 pounds of me up to around 58mph indicated, but it took a long time to get there, I had to lay down on the bike, and who really thinks the speedometer was accurate anyway? With the trail overlay sprocket, which I also used for racing in the '70's (lack of funding dictated using what I had), the Ace would do around 50mph. Even with a Webco 125 kit on it, it still didn't go much over 50, it just got there quicker.

Today, with a Super Combat engine on it, and geared for MX, it will do 62 indicated by GPS. The difference in speed is achieved with way more power. I could probably gear the bike for speeds of 70 or more, but only because it now has twice the power it did when it was a 100, and has a power band that tops around 10,000rpm instead of 7,500rpm.

Personally, I think Dale's estimates are reasonable, but also that the only way to know is get out there and run it. The RT was never a highway bike. When I was younger, most of the highways were posted as prohibited for motorcycles 100cc's and under, and it wasn't unreasonable. If you can only do 50 flat out, and the rest of the traffic is doing 70+ and weighs a lot more than you do, why go there? The RT is an around town bike at best as far as speeds go.

[Bill2001]

+1 to all advice here.

--Bill