Genuine Buddy, your rear rack sucks, let me count the ways.

[DeeDee]

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.

[sc00ter]

The rear rack is my only gripe with the Buddy scooter. It's more fun when the rear cross brace fails, the rack flops on the tail light and strips out the front 2 tube mounting points.

A loooong time ago someone on this site found aluminum rear racks. From Thailand or someplace. Shame no one followed up and brought those in for us who use the rear rack to haul more than a pair of socks. But then again, when I was getting a new scooter I picked the Liberty 150 over a Buddy 125. The reason, rear rack mounts! But no one else on this site has ever had a rear rack fail on a Buddy so we must be the exceptions.

[tenders]

My friend's Buddy came with a rather large Shad top case that created a lot of leverage on the tube caps that the rack screws into. One of the tube caps cracked off from the tube, leaving the case to flail around a little and put even more strain on the other tube cap.

My fix was to remove the mount, scuff-sand the inside of the tube a little by hand with a bit of sandpaper, stuff a plastic grocery bag about three inches down the tube as a stopper, then to pour about 2.5" of epoxy and chopped-up fiberglass cloth into the tube. Then I mounted the tube cap back onto the tube with a waxed bolt screwed all the way into the tube. The epoxy hardened, sticking itself into the tube, but also creating a threaded hole when the waxed bolt was unscrewed and remounted with the rack in place.

Essentially the epoxy plug replaces the broken-off cap as the threaded attachment point for the rear mount.

That's lasted for two years so far.

[DeeDee]

I'm counting three: The crossmember of the Prima rack. The forward mouning points on the scooter, and the rear gas tank bracket on the scooter. On my personal scooters, 1 & 3. I have been a part to all 3 numerous times on other's. It seems 95% of the Buddy's problems are in this 1 square foot of space.

[Point37]

i wonder if they could build a rack that's supported off of the rear crash bars for more capacity

[babblefish]

Old thread but I wanted to add my 2 cents. My rack mount broke also, probably due to overloading my top case with 35lb bags of cat litter, rocks, dead body parts, and stuff like that. Before installing the new mount, I reinforced it by welding in a 1/8" thick steel strap bent to triangulate the mount, thereby increasing it's carrying capacity by quite a bit. It's hard to see in the picture, but the steel strap is one piece. Wish I had taken a picture of the strap before I welded it in place. The difference in rigidity of the mount is quite noticeable. The rack itself was also strengthened by replacing the original, thin, horizontal strap (which broke off on it's own) that bolts onto the rack mount with a 1/4" thick piece of steel. This setup has been holding up to my abuse for almost three years now.

[tenders]

…overloading my top case with 35lb bags of cat litter, rocks, dead body parts, and stuff like that.

Thug life chose you, huh?

My buddy’s Buddy rack bracket also succumbed earlier this year. I thought about doing something fancier for the fix, but he really had mistreated it and the replacement bracket was so inexpensive….

[sc00ter]

My turn at 8000 miles. I don't think weight is the issue, it's railroad tracks. Anyways, the lower panels release pushing forward, toward the front of the scooter. I broke a clip. Anyways, for reference.

[DeeDee]

I think the constant gyration from my 32L top case was too much for the poorly designed / made rack-infrastructure. I've switched to a milk crate. When empty, it adds no additional movement back there, and I fit a week's worth of groceries in it. I don't load it up nearly as heavy as I did with the top case.

[sc00ter]

I'll tolerate the rack for the overall simplicity of the Buddy. I ordered 2 of those replacement brackets and I might have a reinforcement plate welded in the standby bracket, kinda like babblefish did.

DeeDee, I dug the C3 in the background. Those are just flat out awesome scooters.

[DeeDee]

DeeDee, I dug the C3 in the background. Those are just flat out awesome scooters.

Truer words never spoken, 3 valves, fuel injected, liquid cooled, 115 mpg with a top speed of 50.1 mph.

[sc00ter]

Just hit 12,000 miles and I hear what sounds like a mouse squeaking under the rear panels. The dreaded tank strap again. I don't have a welder so I might try packing JB Weld into the underside of the new tank strap in a vain attempt at "reinforcing" it. Other than that I still love my Buddy except that rack system.....

I still think my tank strap breaks from hitting bumps. The railroad tracks are the worse because I can't slow down. If I do I'll get ran over by a banged-up ghetto car with no insurance. Plus I have one major intersection I cross twice daily that's like a washboard! And lets not forget the random potholes, sunken sections, sewer caps that are countersunk and all the other road hazards whose sole purpose is to destroy our Buddy rear racks. I'm half tempted to get the front basket (as unsightly as it is) and put the original passenger grab bars back on sometimes. I did have a JDM Yamaha Jog Cargo that had a purpose built front basket! It (front basket) looked cool because the huge rear rack matched it perfectly. I miss that little Yamaha.

[DeeDee]

My bracket has held steady for over 2 years now. I attached aluminum plate bent to fit on the underside with epoxy. I picked up this stylish bag on 1/2 price senior day at the thrift store for $3.00. It's some type of overnight bag. It holds quite a bit, not as much as the milk crate, but I like the look better. Not too many items on the con side of the GB, but the rear rack is one.

[sc00ter]

So this time when the rear tank strap failed it broke all 3 points. I noticed that this time the 2 in the front/each side of the seat no longer have the nuts welded/pressed in cups, they are capped so to speak. Sorry no pics because I was fixing it at midnight and I was just trying to get it done, So the 2 "new" style cap nuts have a little cup the goes over the tubes so you can at least re-attach them with JB Weld, but I suspect that this can only be done once and the JB Weld hates the paint and doesn't want to adhere without a bunch of sanding first in tight spaces. So everything is rigged back together but I'm apprehensive about re-installing the rear rack/top case. I dug out the original passenger grab rack and put that on instead. I'm tempter to get a front basket or front rack but I hate the look of them.

Other thing that got destroyed was the rear panels that cover the tank strap. I can't connect the middle section above the tank strap and have a huge gaping seam now. I taped it back together for now as all the clips are missing. And to think I have a Plastex repair kit on hand for such emergencies but no clips to reattach. I shouldn't have to fix a poor design every year, rigging it further and further.

Best part of all this rack nonsense is the lower panel that goes from the front to rear section really tested my temper. The one on the side stand side is easy to slide back on, but the exhaust side....... The panel hits the cooling fan intake shroud and did not want to go back on because I couldn't get it back on the clips during re-assembly. It took me 30 minutes and I finally somehow got it clipped back on. I have to run some errands this morning so I'm stopping by the Honda dealer and sitting on a PCX just because its on the way.

[az_slynch]

Sorry to hear about the rack mount failures. I've done that repair before, it was on Howardr's St. Tropez. What I wound up doing was putting a flanged nut on a 1-in fender washer and tacking it in place. Then I wound up welding the washer to the top of the tube.

The 170i that I just fixed for my friends has a similar issue. I was thinking about having my machinist turn a steel plug that I can insert into the tube and weld into place. They've broken their mounts more than once and it's got a really crappy repair in it right now.

I agree that it is a weak point on these bikes. Not sure why they didn't have a more robust solution in the first place. Maybe it wasn't really meant to have a rack, but rather just a set of grab handles.