Modern Buddy

Hey y'all,
Back in March I picked up my first scooter -- Buddy 125 with ~500 miles on it for $1,000 -- and she's been riding smooth everyday. I'm in love.

Unfortunately, during a brief lapse in judgment, I tipped it over in the driveway -- breaking off a mirror and bending the left break lever (thankfully it had cowl protectors on it when I bought it). The break lever still engages, but it's shifted down compared to the right one. The metal isn't bent...it's like the base just got bumped down. Should I worry about getting this fixed? Any way I could fix it myself? I could take pictures if needed.

Secondly, since I got the buddy for cheap and am already obsessed with riding it, I'd love to give it a performance upgrade. My problem is that I really don't know what's good or what works, and there isn't much information available on the internet. If you had 400-500$ to spend (including labor for installation) on strictly speed/performance enhancing upgrades, what would they be? Prima Pipe? Higher cc cyclinder kits? Show me some wisdom. Thanks guys!

the piece of plastic where the mirror screws into and the brake lever is attached - that is actually a clamp that surrounds teh handlebar. See if you rotate it so it is back in alignment. I did the same thing awhile back and I was able to pull up on the brake lever until everything was back where it should be.

I would like to hear about other people's performance suggestions as well though!

strambley wrote:the piece of plastic where the mirror screws into and the brake lever is attached - that is actually a clamp that surrounds teh handlebar. See if you rotate it so it is back in alignment. I did the same thing awhile back and I was able to pull up on the brake lever until everything was back where it should be.

+1 to that. That's what I did.
As for upgrades, you might want to wait until you have about 1500 miles on before you do much. Most have seen a definite uptick in performance at about that mark which probably means that's the true "broken-in" mileage.

Yeah I've read some posts about that. I'm at 1,300 so should be getting to that number soon. I'm sure I'll notice a difference, but I wouldn't mind dishing out some extra money for a true upgrade. I've been reading about cylinder upgrades because I carry around friends pretty often, so it looks like that would help with hill climbs and maintaining a solid 50mph speed. Just some more powerful acceleration would be fun as well.

I used a piece of pipe and got it back to almost perfect .Im the only one that knows I crashed,I bought used and it came with a crash bar.It will save your scooter from damage! A bent break handle was all my damage,and a fractured ego