Honda’s littlest adventure bike, the Trail 125, aka the CT125, gets an interesting upgrade for 2023—a longer-stroke engine.
Alas, displacement remains at 124 cc. The motor is still mostly unchanged; a four-speed gearbox (with clutchless shifting), electronic fuel injection as standard, and we would expect little change in the max output of 9 hp. However, the reduction in bore size (down 2.4 mm, to 50 mm) and the longer stroke (up 5.2 mm, to 63.1 mm) probably means cleaner tailpipe emissions, and more importantly for us, it might also mean a bit stronger low-end or mid-range. Longer-stroke engines often don’t rev quite as easily as short-stroke engines, but they often have beefier torque curves.
The engine compression rises from 10.0:1 to 9.3:1 as well. The changes are admittedly modest, but they will probably be noticeable by the seat-of-the-pants dyno. It does not take much updating to notice a change when you’re dealing with an engine this low in power.
Along with the engine update, Honda also changed the EFI system slightly, which might be why the revised bike weighs 2 kg less. There’s also a new green paint scheme… for US buyers!
None of these changes have been confirmed for Canadian customers; they’ve only been announced for the US market at this point. We would typically expect Canada to get the same changes, but if Canada’s shipment of Trail 125s was sent out before the updates, maybe we’ll be waiting for the next boat from Japan before we see these revisions as 2024 models. Note that currently, Honda Canada lists the Trail 125 in Glowing Red, at an MSRP of $5,640—more photos and deets at Honda Canada’s website. For our original run-down on the bike’s features, see here.
Can’t find the clock on mine!
Canadian version has Asian style rotary transmission where U shift down to go to next higher gear NOT the US sequential transmission with accepted shift pattern ie shift up to next gear
oops HonDUD Canada
2023 canadian model have all those changed minus the green paint
Honda never seems to run out of that tiring red paint.
Least it’s not gray or black again. Yeesh, what happened to all those great colours from the seventies. The Elsinore’s even had red engines at one time! Loved it.