Genuine Buddy, your rear rack sucks, let me count the ways.

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DeeDee
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Genuine Buddy, your rear rack sucks, let me count the ways.

Post by DeeDee »

Genuine Buddy 125 is one of my favorite scooters of all time. Genuine /Prima sure has screwed the pooch with their rear cargo options. My chrome Prima rack cracked cleanly at the bends of the cross member when I had it on my 170i 7 years ago. I have seen a handful others with similar failures. Don't even get me started on the original design that had a single tab coming off the 8mm chrome round bar. I had my chrome rack welded, and reinforced with L brackets at the bend. I had a fat fender washer welded around the center mounting hole to beef it up as well.
I've worked on 4 Buddy scooters where the mounting nuts fail at the vertical tube. Some of them the nut pulls out from the cap, others the cap comes completely off. Ask Ryan about this. He finally strapped his up with a bungee cord, and called it a day.
On my latest 125, the cross member at the rear of the tank broke in two places. It made a mess out of the back cowl panels where they attach together. I gave a good effort to weld it back together, but it bent and twised before it snapped. I would have never been able to fit it all back together properly. I have a donor scooter with a plastic tank. Mine is steel. By the way, the frames are different. You can't mount a plastic tank on a steel tank frame.
I cut the extra part off the bracket used with plastic tanks and made an insert out of 1/8" aluminum plate. I bent it in the vice to follow the bracket. I cleaned the paint off the underside of the bracket and bonded the two pieces together with JBWeld. I'm putting the rack back on, but will leave my top case off. I think just the bouncing up and down of even an empty top case takes a big toll on these pieces.
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Less chit chat, more riding, Buddy 50, 125, 170i, RH50, Yamaha C3
sc00ter
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Re: Genuine Buddy, your rear rack sucks, let me count the ways.

Post by sc00ter »

The rear rack is my only gripe with the Buddy scooter. It's more fun when the rear cross brace fails, the rack flops on the tail light and strips out the front 2 tube mounting points.

A loooong time ago someone on this site found aluminum rear racks. From Thailand or someplace. Shame no one followed up and brought those in for us who use the rear rack to haul more than a pair of socks. But then again, when I was getting a new scooter I picked the Liberty 150 over a Buddy 125. The reason, rear rack mounts! But no one else on this site has ever had a rear rack fail on a Buddy so we must be the exceptions.
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tenders
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Re: Genuine Buddy, your rear rack sucks, let me count the ways.

Post by tenders »

My friend's Buddy came with a rather large Shad top case that created a lot of leverage on the tube caps that the rack screws into. One of the tube caps cracked off from the tube, leaving the case to flail around a little and put even more strain on the other tube cap.

My fix was to remove the mount, scuff-sand the inside of the tube a little by hand with a bit of sandpaper, stuff a plastic grocery bag about three inches down the tube as a stopper, then to pour about 2.5" of epoxy and chopped-up fiberglass cloth into the tube. Then I mounted the tube cap back onto the tube with a waxed bolt screwed all the way into the tube. The epoxy hardened, sticking itself into the tube, but also creating a threaded hole when the waxed bolt was unscrewed and remounted with the rack in place.

Essentially the epoxy plug replaces the broken-off cap as the threaded attachment point for the rear mount.

That's lasted for two years so far.
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DeeDee
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Re: Genuine Buddy, your rear rack sucks, let me count the ways.

Post by DeeDee »

I'm counting three: The crossmember of the Prima rack. The forward mouning points on the scooter, and the rear gas tank bracket on the scooter. On my personal scooters, 1 & 3. I have been a part to all 3 numerous times on other's. It seems 95% of the Buddy's problems are in this 1 square foot of space.
Less chit chat, more riding, Buddy 50, 125, 170i, RH50, Yamaha C3
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Point37
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Re: Genuine Buddy, your rear rack sucks, let me count the ways.

Post by Point37 »

i wonder if they could build a rack that's supported off of the rear crash bars for more capacity
'10 Triumph Bonneville SE (sold), '00 Yamaha TW200 (sold), '08 Husqvarna SM510R (sold), '05 Honda CBR 600RR (sold), '03 Honda CBR 600RR (sold)
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babblefish
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Re: Genuine Buddy, your rear rack sucks, let me count the ways.

Post by babblefish »

Old thread but I wanted to add my 2 cents. My rack mount broke also, probably due to overloading my top case with 35lb bags of cat litter, rocks, dead body parts, and stuff like that. Before installing the new mount, I reinforced it by welding in a 1/8" thick steel strap bent to triangulate the mount, thereby increasing it's carrying capacity by quite a bit. It's hard to see in the picture, but the steel strap is one piece. Wish I had taken a picture of the strap before I welded it in place. The difference in rigidity of the mount is quite noticeable. The rack itself was also strengthened by replacing the original, thin, horizontal strap (which broke off on it's own) that bolts onto the rack mount with a 1/4" thick piece of steel. This setup has been holding up to my abuse for almost three years now.
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tenders
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Re: Genuine Buddy, your rear rack sucks, let me count the ways.

Post by tenders »

babblefish wrote: Sat Oct 21, 2023 8:03 am …overloading my top case with 35lb bags of cat litter, rocks, dead body parts, and stuff like that.
Thug life chose you, huh?

My buddy’s Buddy rack bracket also succumbed earlier this year. I thought about doing something fancier for the fix, but he really had mistreated it and the replacement bracket was so inexpensive….
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