Putting our TST Honda Grom Crash Protection to the Test: UPDATED

After installing some of our Honda Grom crash protection, I wanted to put it to the test. We decided to hoon the little 125cc Grom until something bad happened,  and it did. Hi, I’m Robert Callahan and welcome to Jackas…err I mean, TST Industries.

*play intro music*

Okay, that’s not really what is going on here, although it would be a lot cooler of a story if it was. The honest truth is I hit some gravel on my way home, which we all know is the mortal enemy of motorcycle tires. I crashed my Grom, got a concussion, and was able to see how our Honda Grom crash protection held up in a real-life test. So let’s get into the good stuff!

First up, what’s installed on my Grom?

I have all of our goodies like the integrated tail light, chain adjusters, MECH-GTR turn signals, all that fun stuff installed on my Grom; but what really matters in this case, is what kind of crash protection do I have. That, my dear friends, is a pretty short list, consisting of just front and rear axle sliders and our frame sliders. I don’t have bar ends since I’m rocking some bar-end mirrors so I can see all the R6’s I leave in the dust (heavy sarcasm), so the axle and frame sliders have some heavy lifting to perform in terms of protection. The axle sliders help protect your fork bottoms, brake assemblies, and rear swingarm. Meanwhile, the frame sliders help protect the engine and side fairings. All of those are critical components that could put a serious dent in my wallet if they got damaged, even on the Grom. I’m not about wasting money, so if there’s something I can do to protect my baby Grom, I’m going to do it.

Now, let’s get to the part where I hit the pavement. I had spent about an hour riding around on some back roads near my house and doing some parking lot knee drag practice when I decided to call it a day. I was almost home, only about 20 yards away from my driveway to be exact. If there wasn’t a car blocking the spot I crashed in my doorbell camera, I would have had some sick footage of me bouncing off the road. I turned left onto my street with a bit more speed than I normally do, when the rear wheel decided to take a detour with some gravel. It decided to slide out, turning me and the grom sideways. I knew it could go one of two ways. The rear could keep sliding and the bike and I would fall to the ground and slide to stop, or what’s called a “lowside”. Or, the rear tire could suddenly regain traction and flick me back upward and fall to the other side, commonly referred to as a “highside”. Lowsides are typically less damaging to both the bike and the rider since it doesn’t violently flick both elements towards the outside of the turn.

Here’s an example of a lowside vs a highside crash. All footage credit goes to MotoGP / Dorna Sports.

 

As luck would have it, the rear tire regained traction and the Grom flicked towards the outside of the turn, throwing me with it. A fitting outcome in 2020 to be honest. I was still holding onto the handlebars and attempted to correct course since I didn’t flip all the way to the other side. It was a well-fought try, but we were so misaligned at that point the bike slammed back the other way, taking us both to the asphalt. I hit hard, and even though I had a small concussion, I know it could have been much worse if I wasn’t wearing full gear (insert ATGAT speech here).

As I came to and picked myself up, I turned around and saw the Grom on its side up against the curb with skid marks in the road leading up to it. It had shut itself off already and thankfully had very little gas in the tank, so nothing was spilling out. I picked it up and limped the remaining 20 yards to my driveway…I was so close! At this point, I was too focused on assessing my own injuries that I hadn’t looked at the Grom. I knew it would roll straight and that’s about it.

After taking my gear off and receiving a concussion test over facetime from my step-father (gotta love having an athletic trainer in the family), I was ready to face the damage. I was prepared to see rashed fairings at the very least, and frankly, I didn’t want to imagine the worst.

That’s when I saw it. Nothing. Not a scratch on the side fairings besides a rubber boot scuff on the seat fairing that rubbed off with my hand. The engine, swingarm, wheels, turn signals, forks, brake calipers….all of them were perfect! I found my lever had a few TINY scratches, as did my mirror, but so tiny you would hardly notice it. The rest of the damage was to the slider pucks and the stock foot peg slider bolt. The frame slider puck was skidded off some, as was the front axle slider. The rear didn’t even make contact.

I was genuinely shocked, and it reaffirmed my already deep respect for the work that our engineers do to ensure the parts we make do their job. I turned the key, pressed the ignition, and she started right up. It was like nothing had happened. All I needed to do was grab a set of new pucks and the bike would be back to normal.

Now, this should go without saying, but each crash is different and there’s no way to standardize how a bike will fall or the surface that it’ll fall onto, so our crash protection is built for generalized protection.

If you ride your Grom, and I mean at all, there’s no reason not to install some crash protection. I know that if I didn’t, many of the parts on my Grom would be facing the same permanent shelf sentence that my helmet has faced.  At the end of the day / blog article, you should learn from my mistakes and always keep an eye out for gravel, no matter how small. But if you happen to slip up like I did, it’s good to know that having some quality crash protection installed can keep your bike…and your wallet, protected.

UPDATE: February 2022

Well….It happened, again. This time with my Queen Bee Yellow 2022 Honda Grom. You would think that after the first time I would be better at looking for gravel, yet here I am. Thankfully, I had our 2022 Honda Grom Frame Sliders and Axle Sliders installed on the new yellow beast, but how well did they do their job? That’s what I’m here to report, so let’s get into it!

Just like most of my Grom rides, I was enjoying the wide-open space of a parking lot and ripping it around the tight corners of the imaginary track I had laid out in my head, weaving through lamp posts and the lines in the parking lot. There were a few patches of sand gravel that I knew to avoid, but apparently, I missed one…a big one. I can only guess as to what led up to the crash because I don’t remember much of it, which makes this story a bit less exciting to be honest. I could have been watching my wife on her Z125 to make sure she was doing okay, or I could have been looking at the entrance to make sure there weren’t cars coming in, or maybe I was looking directly at the gravel and just thought it was asphalt. Your guess is as good as mine. Nonetheless, I woke up face down on the ground in a world of pain. My poor wife saw the tail end of me rolling across the parking lot and was right there to make sure I wasn’t seriously injured, which thankfully I wasn’t. Just another concussion (add it to the list), a bloody knuckle from where my gloves split, and some bruises. After the initial self-assessment, our sights turned to the Grom that was laying on its side about 15 feet away from me. I couldn’t muster the effort to get up just yet, so I laid back down on the asphalt while she ran over to my bike and picked it up to assess the damage. I was fully prepared to hear her say “It’s really messed up” but after what seemed like an eternity of waiting for those words, she exclaimed, “The crash protection did its job! It’s fine!”. That was a huge relief because some of my gear was totaled, and I was not looking forward to adding extremely hard-to-find OEM Grom parts, like fairings, to the list.

After a fun ride home (heavy sarcasm) from the parking lot and some much-needed R&R time, I’ve been able to give the Grom a really solid inspection. I’ve intensely looked over each part, taken photos, and reported back to the engineers that designed the frame sliders and axle sliders. I know I shouldn’t be surprised at how well these parts do their jobs, after all, I know the guys that design them and they are incredible, but after a fall that kicked my butt like this one, it’s always a bit surprising to see the Grom looking like nothing happened and ready to go for another ride. 

Each crash protection item is thoroughly tested before we release them to our customers, but with each crash, we are able to gather critical information that demonstrates how effective our crash protection components are at preventing damage and keeping your two-wheeled buddy safe. It represents yet another piece of real-world data on how well our designs protect the fairings, controls, suspension, engine cases, swingarm…all of it. It demonstrates just how successful each design is and guides us in future product development. With the right set of items installed on your bike, you stand a much better chance of being able to pick it up off the ground and ride it away. Each crash is different though, and there is a world of other variables that can’t be factored in, but thankfully my two Grom crashes have proven that TST crash protection is the real deal. I’ve got both a high-side and low-side crash under my belt to prove it.

About Robert Callahan

I ride a 2013 Honda CBR600RR and 2022 Honda Grom...oh and I do some marketing stuff, too.