When I went to put the original stock rear piece on until I could get a new rear rack, I found that the bolt that the screws go into to hold the rack in place, had also broken. To get to them, I had to remove both the bottom side and rear quarter panels. At that point, Buddy looked kind of like this:
I initially thought we would be able to tack a new nut into the hole, but it looked like this when we got everything clear:
The other side was worse. So, we decided to make our own. We got a nut with a flange on it, then added a washer that covered the hole in the top of the tube of the scooter frame. First we welded the washer and nut together:
When that was done, it looked like this:
We knew we were going to do some welding on the back of the Buddy, so we pulled the fuel tank off. At first we thought it just a matter of removing 4 screws, but the tank wouldn't come out until we also removed one screw on the seat latch so we could swing it to one side. At that point, the Buddy looked like this:
Then, with a small grinder, we ground down all the old material from the top of the tube:
Unfortunately, I was so excited to have it repaired, I forgot to take a pic of the finished project. However, it looks about like new. We welded it all the way around the tube, so it should be stronger than the original.
The other problem I was having as I was removing the panels is that several of the plastic tabs had broken off as well. I attribute that to a combination of my riding style and the Arizona sun. It is murder on all things plastic. I don't have covered parking for my vehicle at home or at work, so Buddy catches a lot of rays.
This wasn't meant to be educational, just informative.
Howard
