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+--- Thread: A day of riding the Honda 125 Dax and 125 Grom (/showthread.php?tid=15033)
A day of riding the Honda 125 Dax and 125 Grom - Stichill - 08-31-2026
My buddy Jeff is the proud owner of a 2025 Dax and a 2024 Grom. He invited me to go riding with him on his mini-motos this last Sunday, here in Nothern Kentucky.
Both bikes have been modified with cams and re-mapping. Jeff says they come stock with about 8 HP and his mods bump that to about 10 HP. He also lowered the gearing so both will hit the rev limiter in 1-2-3. This makes them pull harder than stock, but the downside is the fuel economy falls from about 100 mpg to maybe 80 mpg. Not as big a deal on the Grom with a 1.5 US gallon tank, but the Dax has a 1-gallon tank, and you need to keep an eye on it. It also throws the speedo off on both bikes, which is odd because the Dax takes speed off the front wheel, but the Grom takes it off the front sprocket, so no surprise there.
I rode the Dax first, in the morning session. We rode from about 9:30 am to noon, when we stopped for a BBQ lunch in Falmouth, Kentucky. Then I hopped on the Grom and rode it from about 1:00 pm to 3:00 pm.
I enjoyed the seating, arm, and leg position - and great mirrors - of the Dax. I'm only 5'5" tall, so the bike fits me well. Believe it or not, I still could not flat-foot it, ha ha! But it's so light, that doesn't matter at all. I found the cluchless shifter a bit tricky to get used to. It's a heel-toe shifter. I think you're supposed to push down on the toe to downshift and kick down on the heel to upshift. That's all well and good, but my boot didn't cover the heel and toe pedals simultaneously, so it required moving the foot fore and aft to shift this way. I ended up just using toe-under to upshift and toe-on-top to downshift, but the upshift was awkward because you have to reach down pretty far to get a toe under. A couple of times, I accidentally downshifted trying to get my toe under it. If I owned a Dax, I'd probably replace the heel-toe shifter with a regular toe shifter positioned a little higher. I found that to shift, though, you just need to let off the throttle and execute the shift, whereas on downshift, rev-matching is rewarded with the rear tire not unexpectedly grabbing when the lower gear hits.
The Grom has a further modification of bars cut down narrower, which I thought was a good mod. Wider would have seemed odd to me. It also has bar-end mirrors. Jeff said the stock mirrors only show your shoulders. You sit more forward on the Grom, and your knees are slightly more cramped. It's a 5-speed clutch. I felt very natural on it. It has a lot of DNA in common with my CBR250R in terms of the riding stance. I was much more confident and faster on the Grom than the Dax. That being said, I think I enjoyed the Dax more, mainly because it's a very different riding experience than my 250.
I would say that Jeff's HP and gearing improvements are absolutely necessary if you want to run these bikes out in the country at highway (and above) speeds. They would probably be fine stock in the city, beach community, etc. That 125 motor is a stout little beastie. It seems to be bulletproof. We ran them flat-out all day long, often hitting the rev-limiter at 10,000 rpm (stock redline is 7,000) and they never complained or showed any signs of quitting.
The Dax beats the Grom on looks by far. It's cool, vs the Grom which is an ugly little insect bike. My only aesthetic critique of the Dax is I don't like black wheels. I'd prefer silver.
![[Image: Dz2yNOQ.jpg]](https://i.imgur.com/Dz2yNOQ.jpg)
RE: A day of riding the Honda 125 Dax and 125 Grom - the Ferret - 08-31-2026
My younger brother has a Monkey and one nephew a Grom, and they do these organized small bore rides. They ride the heck out of those little things
So i should have mentioned besides Razor showing up, Lunchbag made it in last night too it as well as Dac and Goldwing Dave
RE: A day of riding the Honda 125 Dax and 125 Grom - Gone in 60 - 09-01-2026
When I was ops manager for our racing organization, we had a fleet of Ruckus scooters that our parking team used to zip around the property, taking racers to their pit spaces and helping them spot their race rigs.
One of the "cool guys" bought a Grom and had me keep it in our operations trailer for him to use at the events. Pretty soon all of the guys had personally-owned Groms on the trailer. It became a competition... they'd order custom parts for them and bring them to the tracks and mod their Groms during down time. Billet parts, LED turn signals, exhausts, etc. Didn't take long before they were racing them too.
RE: A day of riding the Honda 125 Dax and 125 Grom - alprider - 09-01-2026
Did they reverse the shift pattern on the DAX specifically for the Americans so they could use it....
....? ....Normally, pressing the front pedal shifts up, and pressing the back pedal shifts down. (seesaw switch of the Dax and Super Cub)
RE: A day of riding the Honda 125 Dax and 125 Grom - Gone in 60 - 09-01-2026
(09-01-2026, 11:03 AM)alprider Wrote: Did they reverse the shift pattern on the DAX specifically for the Americans so they could use it....
Huh. That would be sorta backwards compared to what we're used to. My VTX had a rocker shift lever like that, but pressing on the front pedal was down, and rear pedal was up. So, if you just used the front pedal like a normal shift lever, you could - down for downshift, up for upshift.
RE: A day of riding the Honda 125 Dax and 125 Grom - MagnaRider - 09-01-2026
Yea my Vstar has a rocker shifter and a few older ATVs I owned had a rocker shifter.
Front (Toe) was downshifting, Rear (Heel) was upshifting. Like gone said you can use the toe shifter like a normal shifter.
RE: A day of riding the Honda 125 Dax and 125 Grom - Cormanus - 09-01-2026
I had a Honda scooter back in the 1980s. I couldn't swear to it, but I'm pretty sure the rocker shifter was heel for upshift and toe for down. Europe is different?
RE: A day of riding the Honda 125 Dax and 125 Grom - alprider - 09-02-2026
I would say the USA is different in the case of the DAX and Super Cub...........
RE: A day of riding the Honda 125 Dax and 125 Grom - Gone in 60 - 09-02-2026
Who’da guessed that?