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)
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.
