Modern Buddy

I poked around here a bit looking for something like this and didn't find it, so I thought I'd share what I did to add a battery charger pigtail to my Buddy 150. Will also apply to a 125, and maybe to a 170i, but you'll need to modify the idea for a 50 (you'll see why). Please be gentle with me, this is my first project post here!

Basic idea is I wanted to add a charger pigtail to my 150, and I wanted it under the seat - out of the weather, and so I don't need tools to hook up the charger when I want to use it. I'm going to assume you have some basic vehicle electrics knowledge, and if you don't, please ask for help!

First, open the seat and take out the 4@M6 bolts (10mm head) holding the seat bucket in place. Then lift the bucket out. You'll see something like this:


Inside that red circle is the battery positive (+) side of the starter solenoid/relay. Flip up that red cover and there's an M6 nut (10mm head). Take that off and put the (+) red ring terminal for the charger pigtail on the post and replace the nut.

The negative wire is going under the ground bolt circled in green. I needed to extend it - I used heat-shrink butt-splice crimp connectors. Pull that bolt out and add the charger pigtail ring terminal to the other wires bolted there and reinstall the bolt.

Then use the existing wire management to route the pigtail towards the gas tank.

Now to route the pigtail to the inside of the seat bucket.



Inside the red circle is (what I believe to be) the dummy plug for where the oil tank fill is on a Buddy 50. So if you have one of those, this part won't work. but you see where I notched it so the pigtail connector could pass to the inside of the seat bucket. I notched it with a Dremel-type tool.

Then carefully lower the seat bucket back into place while feeding the pigtail connector through the notch, and reinstall the 4 bolts.

Did I do okay?

The purpose of this is for what?

If it is to charge/maintain your battery - no.

The charger/maintainers have electronics that "read" the battery levels - pretty sure that all that wiring resistance is going to render that feature useless.

Why not connect directly to the battery?

Sorry to be so blunt, but I think Dan is wrong.. the "wiring resistance" is negligible. The reason for not directly connecting to the battery, is that the best path to the inside of the seat bucket is the way eggsalad did it.

dan v. wrote:The purpose of this is for what?

If it is to charge/maintain your battery - no.

The charger/maintainers have electronics that "read" the battery levels - pretty sure that all that wiring resistance is going to render that feature useless.

Why not connect directly to the battery?

I'm confused by this statement. The wires to which I connected are 4.0 mm^2 wires - approximately equivalent to 10 gauge - so they will have LESS resistance (the thicker the wire, the lower the resistance per foot) than if I'd extended the 0.75 mm^2 - approximately 18 gauge - wire of the pigtail directly to the battery the same distance.

If the resistance on a 10 gauge wire is high enough to impact the voltage reading on the battery, then there is something wrong with the wire.

You put it in as good a place as any, nicely done.

This electrical engineer approves of this installation.

Well, OK - I learned something then. Never seen it done this way. The electricals are not my strong point. Just seems like it would be better to attach straight to the battery.

Slinking off to my corner....

We are trying to hook the battery on a Buddy up to a tender (maintainer), yes? I do this by connecting a 12V plug to the socket on the left side of the leg shield on our Buddy 125. I have such an adapter with both my Battery Tender Jr and Black and Decker charger/maintainer. Both have an option so I don't exceed the 1 amp capacity of the fused circuit on this 12v socket. Been doing this for 12 years in order to maintain the charge on the Buddy battery during the winter. Works great. No new wiring required. (newer scooters with a USB port instead of a 12V socket defeat this approach, of course)

Dooglas wrote:We are trying to hook the battery on a Buddy up to a tender (maintainer), yes? I do this by connecting a 12V plug to the socket on the left side of the leg shield on our Buddy 125. I have such an adapter with both my Battery Tender Jr and Black and Decker charger/maintainer. Both have an option so I don't exceed the 1 amp capacity of the fused circuit on this 12v socket. Been doing this for 12 years in order to maintain the charge on the Buddy battery during the winter. Works great. No new wiring required. (newer scooters with a USB port instead of a 12V socket defeat this approach, of course)

In your case, that's a perfectly good option. In fact, that's how the PO told me she'd done it.

The reason I did not do it this way is twofold. (a) the battery charger/maintainer I already owned is capable of delivering up to 2A of charge (with no switch to reduce that) and I did not want to risk that 1A lighter socket fuse and (b) future plans involve changing the factory cigarette lighter socket from "constant hot" to "ignition switched" - with a relay, of course - so that when I shut the scoot off, it would be impossible to charge using that port.