Would a Toddy rig be an ok choice for me?

[Bent Benny]

I am a fairly new diver. I know that eventually I would like to progress towards tech/cave diving, but that will probably be a while.
I recently watched a video by ISE where he shows how to set up a toddy style sidemount rig.


So I was just wondering if this would be a good way for me to start learning how to dive sidemount. I have everything that would be required to set this up, and it seems fairly simple to use. The reason I am asking about this and not just doing it is because I know that there are dedicated sidemount courses. I just don't know if this is something that I could just learn by doing it or if that would be a dumb idea. I don't have any need to dive SM at the moment, but I have heard from so many people that it is a much more comfortable and free feeling way to dive. I also like the idea that it is scale-able and it would be similar to what I will probably be using later in my diving.

Is there any reason that I shouldn't try this?

 

[RainPilot]

Toddy is not a bad way to try out SM initially. There are some concerns I have heard over the plates in very tight cave passages (@JohnnyC can probably elaborate) but in the interest of not spending extra money to try something you may not like, it is fine.

I find a dedicated SM rig far superior but for a trial period, go for it.

 

[scubadiver888]

I guess it boils down to what you dive now. I started with a jacket style BCD (Sherwood Avid) then switched to Back Plate and Wing (BP/W) years ago. I'm now starting to learn sidemount (SM) and purchased an XDeep harness. The difference between BCD and BP/W is huge. I feel much more comfortable and free using BP/W over BCD. However the switch from BP/W to SM is different. There are some benefits to SM but the switch wasn't an obvious choice.

When I started using BP/W, I immediately put my BCD up for sale and knew I had no intent of going back to BCD. For a short while I'd wear a BCD when helping in the pool (Divemaster) but that was because the shop I worked for wanted me to promote the gear they sold. If I wasn't paid, I wouldn't do it.

Now I have a SM rig but I'm still keeping my BP/W gear. I might use BP/W for certain dives and SM for others.

Even though I had 3 or 4 BP/W setups, I never thought to try a toddy rig. The owner of the shop I frequent (and used to work at) was looking at SM years ago. He tried it all; toddy, home-made, Razor, XDeep, etc.. I waited for him to settle on something that worked for our environment.

I guess if you want to give it a try and have all the gear (or most of it) then I see no reason to not give it a try.

You might want to play with just using the D-rings on the waist belt. If the attachment point on the tanks are nice and tight, reaching the butt plate rails might be a little difficult. Have two sets of D-rings on either side. One for when the tanks are full and one closer to your front for when they start to float.

 

[JohnnyC]

So, a Toddy style rig is an easy way to ghetto rig a sidemount system. It isn't ideal in any way shape or form. Aside from poor tank mounting options, it creates a SIGNIFICANT safety hazard in cave diving, for literally zero benefit other than it could potentially cost very little.

Remember that sidemount came about because the Brits (and later the old school US cave divers) were entering environments where traditional gear just would not fit. Traditional gear does not fit because the passages are low, tight, and unforgiving. While a tank is certainly larger than a plate, a tank can be removed, manipulated, staged, dropped, etc. A backplate, connected to a diver, is incapable of any of those things. Because it is rigid, and against a divers back, it has significant potential to contact the cave and actually cam the diver into position, to the point where movement is impossible. You can neither push forward, nor move backwards. You are stuck, and will remain so until the recovery divers cut you out of every piece of gear you have on so that they can fit you in a body bag. For the vast majority of sidemount divers, this will never be an issue.

A significant number of sidemount divers don't actually need sidemount to accomplish their dives. There are a few benefits beyond fitting in wiggly bits, physical disability comes to mind as the biggest reason, true independent redundancy, etc., but realistically, nobody needs sidemount unless they truly need it for entering places where traditional gear just doesn't fit. It generally sucks on boats, it's a wash in terms of ease of use on land, but I'm not going to begrudge someone for choosing it even when it's unnecessary.

Learning sidemount without instruction is best done after many years and many many dives, preferably in an environment where you've developed the same skills and you're just adapting to a new configuration. There's a lot of very specific tweaking that goes into getting a sidemount system to dive like it's supposed to. You'll see many people pick up a DiveRite Nomad, throw a DIR stage kit on a tank, clip it off, and say they are sidemounting. That is not sidemounting, and the fact that instructors can self-certify to teach this stuff gives real sidemount instructors a bad name. There are also some procedures specific to sidemount that you're not going to think about unless you take a course with a good instructor. You can pay for Steve Martin's videos, and for the most part they're pretty good, but with sidemount the devil is in the details, and you're going to miss a lot of those trying to teach yourself.

If you're committing to sidemount, buy an purpose designed rig. My preference is the xDeep Stealth, either the classic wing or the tec wing. The Hollis Katana is ok too, but I still think the xDeep is a better rig. Most Florida-centric sidemount rigs are designed with large steel tanks in mind, but don't handle aluminums very well. In my experience, the Mexico-style rigs (xDeep, Razor, etc.), while being designed for AL80's, do equally well with larger steels as long as you have the required amount of lift. Some accomplish this with poorly designed wings that beach ball, those suck. If you just want to try it out, I'd recommend borrowing a real rig from a sidemount instructor. It will give you a much better experience, and give you a much better idea of what sidemount is supposed to be.

 

[tbone1004]

Echoing what @JohnnyC said. I think the toddy rigs are downright dangerous for sidemount cave diving because of that ratchet. Is that a problem for most sidemount divers? No. Is it a problem for me? Absolutely and I don’t squeeze into that right of places but I regularly go into places where that rig would cause me problems.
If you have all of the stuff already there’s no issue in assembling it and trying it. If you’re doing ow stuff in cold water the extra weight is useful and there’s nothing inherently wrong with the toddy rigs for anything except true sidemount cave diving.
I am self taught in sidemount and learned prior to it really becoming mainstream. My options for rigs at the time were extremely limited and a lot of it was figuring out how to make what we had work.
If you want to do it and have the stuff, then do it. It’s fine, I just wouldn’t invest in that style system and I would never advocate their regulator configurations which are downright stupid

 

[Bent Benny]

Great, thanks for the feedback guys. Tech/cave diving is a LONG way off for me, but I know that is where I am aiming long term. It sounds like this will be fine for me to try out in the types of environments I currently dive. If I really like it then I may later invest in a true dedicated SM rig eventually.

 

[tbone1004]

@Bent Benny thats the right approach. Use what you have now to make something work. It’s not like that rig is going to get you in trouble and as long as you aren’t in overhead environments it may be a rig you stay with through technical training but if cave is on the docket you will want to switch but I would wait until you are ready for it before investing

 

[JohnnyC]

I'll disagree with Tom here. If you try it, and like sidemount, go buy a decent sidemount rig that doesn't suffer any of the limitations that a cobbled together Toddy rig has, things like improper belt height, limited adjustability, etc. Just because you can sling a tank from it, doesn't mean that it's optimal. I'm fully aware that when I sidemount my bailouts for my rebreathers, it's a compromise to true sidemount rigging, however my profile in the water is big enough that it negates it anyway. If I'm actually diving sidemount, I do it correctly without compromise, regardless of the environment. What's the point otherwise?

You don't need to be a cave diver to optimize your sidemount gear, and if you've decided to commit to sidemount diving, you might as well do it correctly as soon as you make the decision to go with it. Doesn't mean that you have to go out and buy the first rig you find, by all means research what best fits your diving, but commit to at least doing it correctly, and that involves an actual sidemount rig, adjusted correctly, with proper sidemount rigged bottles, etc.

 

[scubadiver888]

Damn. I'm just starting out on sidemount. I figured if I'm going to do it, I'm going to do it right. So I never even considered toddy style. Since I don't do cave diving, I never thought about wedging myself into an open. But now that @JohnnyC mentions it, that is a horrifying thought.

When I said it seems fine to me, I was thinking so long as I don't use my sidemount in places other than where I'd dive my BP/W configuration. Even with a proper sidemount rig (XDeep Stealth) I plan on using it for open water then wrecks I can penetrate with my BP/W. Once I'm as comfortable with sidemount as I am with my BP/W then I might extend my training to cave.

I also like what @JohnnyC said about a lot of tweaking. I've done some training with two people. After I bought the gear, did some adjusting based on numerous articles and research. Got into the water with the first person (wreck/tec diver/instructor). He showed me how to tweak it a little more. Felt noticeably better in the water. The second person (sidemount cave diver, open water instructor) spent time adjusting the gear even further on land. After tweaking the configuration we got in the water, did some drills as he filmed me. Back at the shop we went over the video and talked about some other stuff we could do to make the gear configuration even better.

One thing that worked for me and helped me decide which rig I wanted to use was the instructors. Rather than picking a rig and finding an instructor, I found the instructor and they helped me pick the rig. When you ask people which agency is better (PADI, SSI, SDI, etc.) they will usually say it isn't about the agency, it is about the instructor. I took that philosophy to finding a good sidemount system.

Maybe you could take this one step further. If you can find a good instructor/mentor, maybe they could loan you a sidemount system for you to try. Don't know if anyone is renting these things yet.

 

[bamafan]

For cold water and if you are not getting into really small places it is an excellent option. Most people way overcomplicate things and waste a lot of money.