Its been a VERY long time since I've checked in here but recently the Buddy bug has bitten me again in a bad way, and I thought you all might like a taste of my crazy project. But first some back story:
I bought my first Buddy, an orange 125, in 2008. I commuted on it daily and racked up a ton of miles on it. As I do with nearly all my vehicles I started to modify it. Back when I started there wasn't much in the way of performance information for the Buddy, so I started to forge a path to crazier and crazier motors. My 125 became a 161cc then 180cc (long before Genuine released a 170!), clocking in insane speeds and crazier parts. Finally one day around 2012 my poor little Buddy told me it had had enough and cracked a crankshaft on the motor. That was the end of that poor motor.
Not one to be dissuaded I picked up a used Vespa GTS250 engine and began the crazy task of grafting it into the Buddy's little frame. The project was going well until I got to electronics. I discovered that the GTS had an immobilizer system that I did NOT have the keys for, and Vespa would not sell me new ones. This brought my project to a screeching halt and the poor Voodoo Buddy was stuck in the back of the garage destined to never see the light of day again.... Until yesterday.
I had long since moved on to bigger motorcycles(The current is a Yamaha RD350!) and rarely thought about the little buddy until recently. I had just completed doing a Megasquirt ECU install on the Porsche motor in my 1980 VW bus and it popped into my head like a spectre of the past that Megasquirt can run almost anything, including my GTS engine. Out from under the pile of cardboard and dust I pulled out the long sleeping Buddy and evaluated where it was at.
It was a bit sad looking and I had misplaced some parts in the 10 years its been sitting, but it was mostly there. After some tests I discovered the GTS motor had VERY low compression (60psi) and likely needed a top end... eBay provided a bigger top end and my 250 became a 300. Two days of tinkering with wiring and a Microsquirt I had handy, and we had our first start!!
It sounded healthy even with a mess of quickly bodged wiring and absolutely 0 tuning. Have a listen!
Youtube video of the Voodoo Buddy's first start in 10 years
So if you're still following this crazy train or you're one of the people who remembers back that far into the ModernBuddy archives, thanks for letting me check in! More to come very soon as I bolt this thing back together! I'm a little older now, but just as crazy of a hotrodder as I was back then!
