Doesn’t seem like it’s been another year already, but maybe that’s because time got all wonky in the pandemic era. Or because I’ve straight up ignored this website for 4 months…..
Don’t judge, writing is hard! Plus no one reads this anyways…
Now that I know this will fall on blind eyes, let’s write some thoughts on 5 years of grom ownership!
Typically I always find an excuse to add some form of performance mods, but not this year! Once you get into 4+ years, the focus is shifted from adding look-good and go-fast parts to replacing worn parts. We saw a little bit of that at the end of last year with a complete refresh of the controls, replacing the old aftermarket bars, levers, and grips.
Although we did add comfort in the form of a new saddleman seat, signs that not only the grom is getting older. I know I hinted at a seat DIY but the time and effort was not in my wheelhouse, I’m terrible at shaping foam and even more terrible at upholstery. Saddleman was worth it, I wish I ponied up the dough much earlier.
But back to maintenance mode. As I mentioned in last year’s review, I wanted to focus on the cam chain tensioner and start thinking about a top end rebuild, which I wanted to do at 20,000 miles.
I dove into the cam chain, based on a fellow forum member I was worried about the rollers breaking apart and flinging rubber around, but I was pleased to see that the rollers were in pretty good shape. The tensioner button however was pretty indented. Not horrible, but further wear would lead to a looser chain and more chance of skipping a tooth and getting out of timing. I added a post about this to my build thread and a fellow forum member was kind enough to sell me a delrin button to replace the OEM rubber button which is much more durable.
I was hoping I would hit 20k by now, which in any other year would be easily doable with regular commuting. Not only that, but the new Benelli took a lot of my focus the last few months. I’m less than 500 miles as I type though! So we can dive into the top end rebuild hopefully very soon. I can’t wait to dive into it and am really curious to see what a 20k OEM piston looks like.
Another interesting topic I feel I can comment on with 5 years is longevity. Groms aren’t really known as long termers, they seem to be more of a learner bike to be sold once you upgrade or a stunt bike that may sit in the garage for long periods of time or even straight up trashed and not taken care of. I stand by the fact that proper maintenance will have nearly any bike running forever and the grom is a prime example. I can count on one hand the number of genuine failures of OEM parts that I’ve had over the years: A clutch collar, a dead battery, and a fried stator. That’s pretty much it!
In addition to that, I worked out the regular maintenance costs over the lifetime of the bike and I averaged $235 per year. This amount includes oil changes, tires, chains and sprocket sets, plus all the OEM failures mentioned above. Not bad at all, and this is included in my average cost per mile calculations that I do each year. This year it was much easier since I took the time to catalog everything for full cost breakdowns. Speaking of which, I’ll mention that in the next grom build post because now that I’m putting actual effort into youtube videos, I need to leave something for the people (the literal fractions of dozens of you reading this right now) to look forward to.
Overall 10/10, will grom again. And again. And again….
