I bought a Little Honda
More details to follow.
https://powersports.honda.com/motorcycle/minimoto/trail125
I bought a Little Honda
More details to follow.
https://powersports.honda.com/motorcycle/minimoto/trail125
You meet the nicest people on a Honda.
Following
The backstory:
I got my first bike when I was 11 years old. It was an early 70s two stroke, 60cc, three speed Chibi by Rockford. It was a little bigger than a contemporary Honda 50, and quite a bit nastier.
You most certainly did not meet the nicest people on a Chibi Rockford.
I rode it every day for three or four years, down the dirt roads and across the farm fields of my neighborhood. There was much trespassing. It broke often, but I learned how to fix it when it did. It taught me how to mix fuel, make an engine run, figure out why when it didn't, shift with a clutch and ride in the dirt. It was fun, but I eventually outgrew it, sold it and bought a Mustang.
Mine was Candy Apple Red.
I rode Honda XLs in high school, Honda Super Sports and a Kawazaki GPz (a bike that was absolutely designed to kill me) in college, and then back to Honda (XL) and Suzuki (DRZ 400) dual sports after that. Along the way, I also had some other small Hondas: a CT 70 Mini Trail, a C 70 Passport/ Super Cub, a Ruckus and a Montesa Coda powered by a 250cc Honda two stroke.
The last bike with a license plate that I owned was a fuel injected Harley Sportster. The Sportster surprised me, as it was substantially better than I had expected, but by that point, every other driver on the road was texting behind the wheel, and riding on the street wasn't fun anymore. I sold the Harley, and was bike-free for the first time in a long time.
After a few years, I realized that I didn't miss riding on the street, but I really missed riding minibikes on dirt roads. That was right around the time that Honda reintroduced the Trail 125 to the US market. I remember reading about it in Cycle World and thinking that one of those would be just about as much fun as I needed to have on a motorcycle at that point in my life. And conveniently, I happened to build my house on one of those farmer's fields that I used to sneak onto with the Chibi when I was a kid. Many, but not all, of the old dirt roads are still here.
A few months ago, a friend sent me a link to a low mileage, high $$, 1969 CT70. I told him that it was nice, but at that price, I'd rather have one of the new ones, and sent him a link to Honda's page. Then I started reading what I sent him, and that got the gears turning in my head.
I read everything I could find on the new bikes, and watched a ton of videos. I went to the Honda dealership to take a look, and was told that they've never had one on the showroom floor, because they've all been sold before they arrived. He said that they were expecting to get two of them for the 2024 model year, but they were both still available if I was interested. I thought about it overnight, found some dusty cash that I had laying around, and went back the next day and put down a deposit.
I spent the next seven weeks watching videos on these things while I waited for it to come in...
There are undoubtedly better bikes out there for similar money or less, but I wanted a Little Honda.
Parts have arrived from Japan and Thailand!
(#$hipping
)
Thank you for putting that song in my head. Also, cool Honda.
In reply to Keith Tanner :
It's a great song!
But I'll admit that it's been stuck in my head for weeks.
First mod:
My local dealer had one of these out front last summer. I've never felt so compelled to go buy a new vehicle. I had to stop myself from going to look because my usual high sales resistance would not have been up to the task.
Congrats on your purchase.
Am I the only one that wants to see what's in that big box??
I am hoping its an auxiliary gas tank.
Genuine Honda parts, Thailand, Vaughn, Fast Eddie and the Cub House.
For some reason, probably legal, Honda doesn't offer a single accessory for these bikes through their US dealers, but they do in other countries. The parts catalogs in Honda dealerships list a few items, but they don't have part numbers and can't be ordered at this point. We'll get back to this.
The bike is made by Honda in Thailand. Initially, I was disappointed by this news, but I soon got over it. In fact, I think it might be a good thing.
These things fall under the umbrella of the Honda Super Cub, which is the single largest selling motor vehicle in the world. The Cubs have been in production in dozens countries since 1958. They sold a lot here, but they've sold a LOT more in Asia. They've made more than 100 million of them. They serve as primary transportation in many parts of the world. That being said, the aftermarket is massive, although sometimes stuff is difficult to access here in the US.
Enter: The Internet
When looking for info on them, I've searched under Honda CT125, CT 125, Cub, Super Cub, Hunter Cub, Honda Trail 125, and more.
While waiting for the bike to arrive, I easily watched more than a hundred hours of YouTube videos on them, mostly looking for riding impressions and accessory reviews. There are two old retired guys in particular that I should mention. Vaughn ("Vintage Garage") and Fast Eddie ("Lazy Dog Productions"). Both guys have gone heavy with accessories and modifications.
Vintage Garage is based out of Florida. As far as I can tell, Vaughn was an SCCA racer starting back in the 60s. He seems to buy at least one of every small new Honda on the market, and adds just about every available accessory to them. Vaughn doesn't speak in his videos, which seems odd at first, but I think it's kind of nice. Important details are added in the form of text.
Fast Eddie is a retired Okie who lives in Thailand now with his wife. He bought the Honda, has added a few accessories to it, and modified it with (among other things) a big bore kit. Eddie's videos may not be for everyone, but he tells it like it is and rides a ton of mileage under a lot of fairly extreme conditions.
In addition to learning about the accessories, these videos have taught me a bunch about Thailand and how durable and well built these bikes are.
There is a place in Thailand (several actually) called the Cub House. This is an odd little cultural phenomenon that we don't have here in the US. It's basically a combination high end coffee house / motorcycle dealership that sells Honda Cubs and accessories. They sell their own line of custom accessorized bikes built toward specific riding styles. You may be able to buy accessories through the Cub House Facebook page, but I haven't tried it yet. The Cub House may in fact be an official Honda dealer network, but I'm not sure.
Eddie has added some parts that he refers to as Diablo parts, and calls his bike the El Diablo Special. I tried searching for Diablo parts but wasn't having any luck. Eventually, I found something that looked familiar on eBay, clicked on it, and discovered that the name is actually "Diabolus", which seems to be a line of parts made by a company called K-Speed.
EDIT: My apologies to Eddie: I've seen K-Speed parts labeled as both Diablo and Diabolus. I think it's all the same company.
There are also a bunch of accessories out there sold under the brand name H2C.
Vaughn likes Honda stuff. He did a little research and indicates that H2C items have the same part numbers as Genuine Honda accessories sold in Australia and Japan. He has ordered H2C stuff through Webike Japan, and it has arrived in Genuine Honda packaging.
So... big thanks to Vaughn and Fast Eddie. I have learned some things, and ordered some stuff.
I ordered some H2C parts from Webike Japan, and found some Diabolus parts on eBay from a seller in Thailand called Beezdeals, which was a name I had heard in multiple videos. The eBay parts were sold with free shipping, but shipping from Webike was pretty expensive. I placed my orders the first week of April, and both sellers indicated that I would have my parts before the end of June.
All the parts were delivered in about a week.
In reply to Slippery :
I'm not going to open that until I'm ready to start installing stuff, hopefully in a few hours.
I know what parts are in there, but I'm most excited to see the boxes inside the box. I want to know if they say Genuine Honda on them.
It's still raining here, and the odometer remains at 0.0 miles for now. I'm going to clear off the top of the big box by installing some of the simple stuff.
First, I needed to install a pigtail for the battery tender. This was slightly more of a PITA than it should have been, but only because Honda is so efficient at packaging and covering stuff like batteries.
Yes, I used chopsticks to push out the plastic rivets. Don't judge me. I always have a few in the garage, and they're super handy for stuff like this.
I'm not sure if this will be the final home for the connector or not, but it will work for now and can also double as a charging port for my phone, at least until I can address that.
Next up was a handlebar brace. I don't know if the handlebar actually needs bracing or not, but everyone seems to add one as a convenient place to mount a phone, camera or GPS. There are a bunch of them out there, but I liked the one that Fast Eddie bought from the Cub House. I was able to determine that it was a Kitaco, and bought one from Beezdeals (Taiwan) on eBay. Free shipping!
Installation was fairly simple... which was good, because the directions were written in Thai.
Honda was always good about including tool kits on their motorcycles, but that doesn't seem to be the case with the smaller bikes and scooters. All you get with this thing is a screwdriver and an Allen wrench.
The rear shocks are adjustable for preload, so I bought a Genuine Honda spanner from Amazon for less than $12. It came from California.
Stock gearing is 14t in the front and 38t in the rear (2.71:1).
You can climb hills more easily by going smaller on the front or larger on the rear, at the expense of some top end speed. Honda says not to mess with the gearing.
13t front sprockets are easy to find, but larger 42t rears are difficult. I know what I need, but I just need to figure out where I can buy it.
For now, I picked up a 13t from JT Sprockets. $10.90 on eBay with free shipping from Michigan.
I'm going to just let this sit on the shelf for a while. The word is that changing the front sprocket can mess with the ABS a bit, but changing the rear won't. If I can't find a 42t for the rear, I'll put this on at some point.
There are a couple of other items on top of the box, but those are going to wait for now.
Huge racks just aren't my thing.
This thing is super solid and it's really nicely made, but it's about the size of a medium pizza box (16"x19"). It's the perfect size for mounting a milk crate or big storage box, but I won't be needing either of those things. It's handy for getting the bike up on the center stand, or moving it around in the garage, but I just don't like the way it looks.
Good news from Japan
Two auxiliary gas cans!!!?? 
In reply to Slippery :
Sorry to disappoint you, but at 125 mpg, I don't really feel the need to haul extra gas around with me.
In reply to Woody (Forum Supportum) :
Well ... dont go calling me when you run out of gas!
So I guess Silent Vaughn speaks the truth. The big box came from Webike Japan (not sure if I'm supposed to pronounce it "We Bike" or "Web Bike": I don't speak Japanese...). Two of the items that I ordered are H2C parts, and they came in unopened boxes marked Genuine Honda Parts, and included Honda hardware and Honda paperwork, so I guess that they are, in fact, Honda parts that just aren't sold in the US.
With those two items in my cart, I was about to check out when I spotted a link on the Webike site that said Used Parts. I scrolled through and saw something that caught my eye. I tried to find a comparable new one, both on Webike and on eBay and couldn't find anything like it. It looked pretty good in the photos and it was less than fifty bucks so I decided to take a chance.
I love this:
It's in perfect condition. It may have been a display item, or it could have been purchased, installed and returned, but it doesn't look like it was ever on the road. The hardware and directions were still in a sealed bag.
I'm super happy about this.
The factory air intake actually mounts to the original rack. Theoretically, you can cross a River or stream up to the level of the bottom of the seat.
I don't think I'll need that much capability.
Okay, I wasn't expecting the comment about ABS. Somehow I thought this was a vintage bike that was in exceptional shape. Now that I'm paying attention it obviously isn't. But that says something.
You can't replace the rack or you won't be able to use the bike properly.
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