Modern Buddy

I heard from someone from these forums that the Prima rear racks for the Buddy tend to fail due to bending at the cross-bar. Is there any confirmation on this? I'd only be using the Soft Italia or K-Max topcases.

They are not the greatest of quality. The worse is when they rip the two front bolt seats out of the frame! That being noted, they have gotten slightly better. My last rear rack did 6000 trouble free miles and is still all good (sold Buddy 125) last I heard. I have a reinforcement brace that I use on the rear center mount stud. Just dont put silly weight in the trunk while riding, jump railroad tracks, drop of curbs and check the two front bolts to make sure they dont come loose. Thread Loc helps.

And go K-Max over the soft case. The K's are much nicer quality and they have the third light option plus nice color matching! Im a SHAD fan myself. And, where are you located? If I find that T-bar from Nolan do you want it?

I actually saw someone who posted an older case in a photo that was all-over tangerine, and I fell in love. There seems to be no Soft Italia anyway.

Not sure what T-bar you're referencing, though.

sc00ter wrote:The worse is when they rip the two front bolt seats out of the frame!

That is not a failure of the rack. That is a failure of the mounting points on the frame likely caused by overloading the rack. Many of the early racks had a failure of welds on the rack, but a redesign seems to have mostly resolved that.

Dooglas wrote:

sc00ter wrote:The worse is when they rip the two front bolt seats out of the frame!

That is not a failure of the rack. That is a failure of the mounting points on the frame likely caused by overloading the rack. Many of the early racks had a failure of welds on the rack, but a redesign seems to have mostly resolved that.

Is there a way to ascertain before I buy whether the rack is redesigned or not, or is it just luck of the draw?

I'd be ordering brand-new, if it helps.

T-bar for your D-ringless helmet. I bought a chrome rack and it was welded so crooked we heated it and slowly bent it back to a better position! Ended up powder coating it black. Those early racks would stress the hell out of those front panel mounts from being welded all crooked! Like I said, newer ones are much better. The 3rd gen rear racks have a u-ish shaped rear cross brace. None of the 1st gen "tab" racks still exist, and I have not seen any "new" 2nd gen flat bar cross brace rear racks in awhile. The cross bace would break then pull on the front 2 mounting points. Should be fine now with the u-ish shaped 3rd gen rear racks. Still not 100% perfect buy way better than the old ones.

I was actually able to loop my helmet strap around the notch and it's doing perfectly as is. Thank you for the offer, though!

Just to confirm, this looks like a U-shaped crossbrace to me. Does it look like the one you're talking about? https://www.scooterworks.com/Prima-Rear ... P8967.aspx

Yup. Thats the one. If its off with the front two holes by the panels you may want to bend it a tad more into shape before installing it. But this is the 3rd gen version and it should be much better than the old ones.