Genuine Buddy, your rear rack sucks, let me count the ways.
Posted: Sun Jun 12, 2022 7:04 pm
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.
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.