Honda’s Monkey and Grom minibikes were not built for horsepower junkies, but that doesn’t mean their owners don’t want to muscle up their machines just the same. And, Japanese manufacturer Kitaco is here to help them do that!
Kitaco isn’t a household known name in Canada, but they’re reasonably big in the Japanese domestic market; their stuff can be ordered across the Pacific fairly easily, thanks to sites like Webike. The Internet has made a lot of stuff like this very easy compared to the old mail-order days.
In the case of this new kit for the Grom and Monkey, you see performance improved with a high-compression top end, or even with displacement growing to 164cc or 181cc in various states of tuning—Kitaco even sells a DOHC conversion!. That’s a massive boost over those bikes’ little 125 stock powerplant, even if it doesn’t sound like a big engine. Kitaco recommends you add an oil cooler, upgrade the clutch, muffler and camshaft, install a new EFI system and take care of several other tweaks while you’re fitting the new piston and jug.
Obviously, it can all get pretty expensive! The less complicated kits are cheaper, in the hundreds of dollars, but obviously offer less performance. The 181 Grom DOHC kit costs the equivalent of $2500 CAD, and that’s before shipping and taxes (see it here). Of course, installation jacks the price up even further, unless you do all that work yourself.
But, won’t it be worth it, when you have the fastest minibike on the block? Uh, maybe not, when the neighbour’s kid still passes you on his clapped-out Ninja 250…
Find more details on the Grom and Monkey kits at Kitaco’s site here and here. While it’s in Japanese, there are English translation buttons for many of the options there.
