Modern Buddy

Hello
I own a Buddy 50 scooter that has justover 2300 miles on it. Around the end of october i was driving down the road and my scooter just died on me. It sputtered and then just shut off and wouldnt turn back on. I brought it to the mechanic and they told me it needed a new top end kit and it had been running with out oil. This was confusiing to me cuz i know i had filled it with oil less then 2 weeks and under 100miles before hand but ok fine lets get it fixed so 900$ and 3 weeks later i finally have a working scooter again. I was told to not drive over 35 mph for the first 200 miles to break in the new top end. So i make it apoint to only drive 30mph and i filled the oil before every use to make sure this event did not happen again. Now a few days ago im driving down the road and same thing happens, the scooter just craps out on me in the exact same fashion.
Is this going to be the same problem with the top end or can other factors play into having the scooter just completly die mid trip? I dont have another 900 dollars to sink into this scooter i only paid 2k for. If anyone out there has any suggestions please let me know.

-Branden-

$900 should be a strong incentive to learn to troubleshoot stuff on your own. That seems like an extreme price for a top end replacement, though I haven’t done one or had one done myself. What did the receipt say they did for that much, and for how long was the work warranted?

Fuel - spark - compression...what’s missing with your engine now that prevent it from running? Not having, or losing, one of those three is what has happened in both situations. Without further information it’s pure guesswork on anyone’s part.

I had a 70cc kit done on my old Adly (dealer installed to keep the 2 year warranty) and it was just under $400 total/labor and parts. If your dealer just replaced a bad cylinder and piston without finding out what caused the failure to begin with then I would insist that THEY fix it for FREE under some kind of warranty that should have been provided for labor. If no labor warranty was provided its time to give them a bad review and warn others to not use them. $900 seems very high to replace a top end anyways, but to have it fail again in such a short period of time is just crazy.

Now that the scooter has cooled down completely, can you (gently) turn the motor over via the kick-start? I ask for the following reason: If the motor won't budge, it's seized, but two-stroke motors are prone to something called a "soft-seize" where the motor might free back up after it cools down.

It's worth a shot to (gently) push on the kick-starter. Don't push hard because the kick-starter mechanism isn't very robust and a big guy like me can break one pretty easily. Just put your toe on it and see if you can nudge the motor over.

Let us know what happens with that.

What kind of oil are you running in the bike?