Genuine Buddy 125 Maintnance Notes: Part 4, Stuck Seat Latch

4: Sticky Buddy 125 Seat Latch: Not the problem I was expecting!
The seat latch was something that had never worked right for me. After several good slams, it would sometimes latch, and even then, it would usually pop open if I pulled up on the seat. I had read several forum discussions  where the slam/push issue is described as the latch being out of alignment and a couple of methods of fixing that are outlined. When I got the seat latch out of of the scooter (it takes a 1/4" ratchet, a phillips screw driver and 10 minutes to remove the seat bucket), I found that the latch mechanism itself was sticky, and the catch was not camming over to connect with the latch.

While it was obvious that someone had lubricated the post the latch in an attempt to get it to work, the other post with the catch was stiff and grindy. I ended up oiling and greasing both posts and the latch-catch contact point. When I re-read the forums, there were a few folks who chimed in with "I just needed WD-40 and it worked." This is likely what was going on.

Reassembling the lock mechanism resulted in easy, two finger click-lock closing. No realignment required. Having discovered this by disassembly, I know that there are two points in the lock mechanism that may require lubrication to free, and this can be done from the top without taking the scooter apart at all.

Both these pins need to be lubricated and the catch and latch need to swing freely for the latch to work reliably. The actuating spring isn't very strong, and it won't latch unless there is no resistance.

A photo of the inside of the pet carrier with the seat bucket removed. The unbolted lock assembly is at the left. This scooter has accumulated a lot of dust.

Genuine Buddy 125 Maintnance Notes: Part 3, Rusty Muffler Repaint

3: Cleaning and Repaint a Rusty Muffler on a Genuine Buddy 125
This part has become part and parcel of keeping old equipment working. Stuff rusts. To keep it from rusting further, sand/brush off of loose paint (or if it's not painted, knock corrosion and dirt) then paint it. For exhaust systems and brakes, I use high temperature enamel (High temperature Rustoleum to be specific, but take your pick).

To remove the rust from the muffler, I unscrewed the chrome heat guard, and removed the muffler from the bracket that holds the muffler to the swing arm. Then I attacked the rust using a brass wire brush in my cordless drill and medium grit (~150 grit) sandpaper on the down pipe. It took about 1/2 an hour to get most of the crusty rust off. The job would have been easier with a drill with two handles or an angle grinder (the torque on the wrist from the drill is hard to handle).

After brushing and sanding, I put on a few coats of black paint. I tried to avoid painting the flange to reduce the chance of smelly off-gassing from paint-exhaust contact.

The end result of painting, before re-attaching the heat shield.

Out of curiousity, I measured the exhaust flange size and pipe size. The flange is about 2 3/4" with ~1/4" holes,  and the ID is about 1". The pipe appears to be 1" OD.

 Metric view of the flange.

Metric view of the pipe.

 Another view of the 1" OD pipe.

After the paint had cured, the first few rides yielded strong paint fumes. While not exactly a disappointment, I wouldn't recommend parking the bike in a closed garage without letting it cool, lest it transport you to new and exiting psychological spaces. After a few weeks, the offgasing stopped. Overall, the effort was completely worth it and the aesthetics are much improved.

Genuine Buddy 125 Maintnance Notes: Part 2, Windscreen Mix'n Match

2: Thoughts on Buddy 125 Windscreens
The Buddy does not ship with a windscreen. However, it has so notably increased my comfort and scooter performance that I unabashedly recommend it. I originally installed the Prima windscreen on both scooters. It worked great, and even sustained the scooter falling over mostly intact, with a small chunk broken free from one side. After assembling the windscreen, I realized that most of the universal windscreens on the market would probably fit the Buddy, and then shopped around. I ended up ordering a cheaper windscreen on ebay for $35. This screen actually had superior mounting hardware to the Prima that gave solid mounting and good fit and finish. Riding around showed that the trade off is that the cheap windscreen is somewhat more flexible than the Prima, and bends back a bit in the wind, resulting in helmet-windscreen contact in a full tuck.

Genuine Buddy 125 Maintnance Notes: Part 1, Rear Tire Replacement

1. New Genuine Buddy 125 Rear Tire.
There's a lot of discussion on Modern Buddy on the topic of tires for these bikes. While there is some unusual suggestion and experiences going with larger tires than stock, that seemed out of hand for my goals as a rider and the desire to keep the bike highly marketable. With the stock 3.5-10 (100/90-10) size. A few options were obvious: stock Cheng Shen GTs, Michelin S1, Continental Zippy 1 & 2 , and Heidenhau K58 or K61. The stock tires were entirely adequate, except on wet smooth asphalt where slight skittering could be felt during acceleration, which led to all kinds of uncertainty when cornering and stopping under the same conditions. Between the others, the Heidenhaus looked great, but the price was pretty prohibitive, when I saw the Zippy 1 on sale for $30, I took the plunge.

Getting the tire off was pretty easy. The exhaust needs to be removed via an exhaust flange under the scooter and then two bolts holding the muffler to the swing arm.

Once the exhaust is removed, the tire can be removed either using the 5 acorn nuts or the large center bolt. I went with the acorns.

I originally planned to replace the tire myself, however, after watching a few youtube videos of other people sweating and cussing, I called around and found a shop that was willing to take the job for a reasonable fee ($20, with disposal of the old tire). From what I can tell, the shop used tire irons and it took them about 20 minutes, so in the future I may do it myself. I'd get a big pair of tire irons to do it though.

The tire went back on as easily as it came off. I took the opportunity to work on the rusty muffler before putting it all back together.

Genuine Buddy 125 Maintnance Notes (Intro)

It's not differed maintenance unless it's past the wear bars. 

....Also, I put in a new battery and regularly change the oil.

I've owned and ridden a 2007 Genuine Buddy 125 scooter for 4 5 years. The prior owner noted that it had spent it's formative ~3,000 miles in Oklahoma (It still has a University of Oklahoma parking sticker) rain and dust. He was getting rid of it mostly due to not liking to ride in the suburban hellscape that is the DC metro area and because his wife’s abdomen had started bulging over the past few months: As such he was divesting himself of every symbol of freedom, joy, and dreams of a happy future he owned so as to better situate himself to his new dreary reality.

Since then, I'd run down the battery, changed the oil, added a windscreen, watched the bike fall over in the driveway and break the windscreen, and overall enjoyed a mostly easy riding experience.

By 6,000 miles several issues had become apparent.

1. The rear tire was past the wear bars and wouldn't pass safety inspection
2. The ugly windscreen gave safety inspectors pause and caused inspection to take twice as long, also made the bike look ugly
3. The exhaust was rusting
4. The seat latch rarely latched
5. Having done the Voodoo Buddy Deadlight mod to my wifes 2009 buddy, I was inspired to recreate the effort on the 2007. I had bought all the parts except the LED lights themselves whien I did the 2009, but never finished the job on the 2007.
6. I was never able to get the transmission to smoothly cycle, resulting in mild surging behavior: the rollers needed to be replaced.
7. I want a bigger motorcycle, and fixing 1-6 seemed likely to increase the sales premium I can achieve

Thus, I've embarked on series of projects over the past few months to improve the bike. After an initial, rather long and rambling single post, the tail of fun and excitment has been broken into individual pages, one per project.


Part 1: Rear Tire

Part 2: Wind Screen

Part 3: Muffler

Part 4: Seat Latch

Part 5: Deadlights

Part 6: Sliders and Belt

(And I ranted in detail about Genuine Buddy oil filters here)

Taking Bets

I'd bet that Google is going to close down Blogger next. I feel like I get evicted from whatever platform I'm using on a decadal scale.

Thoughts fixing on Stuck CD/DVD Drive Trays

I built my computer with two DVD Drives that I had reused from other other computers. This is handy because when I have digital media to read or write from a disc, there's normally more than one required, and because, short of Blu-ray, the drive speeds mostly haven't changed since 2007 or so. I could have added a third, but the motherboard does not have a second PATA channel to support it. Thus there is a third drive, probably the only one that was purchased alone, in a USB enclosure.

The two drives in the PC are
Samsung SM-348B CDRW/DVD
NEC DVD +/- RW ND-3450A
And the Drive in the enclosure is a
LiteOn DVD +/- RW -RAM DH-20A4P

On a recent audiobook transcription project, I found that both the Samsung SM-348B and the LiteOn DH-20A4P no longer wanted to open without mechanical assistance. Some investigation showed that depolymerization of rubber parts (where the rubber deforms and becomes sticky) was the culprit in both instances, though the problems were distinct for each device.

The Samsung has a foam rubber gasket around the front of the drive tray, presumably to keep dust from getting into the mechanism. When the drive ejects, this seal was getting caught on the front bezel of the drive as the tray tried to slide out, blocking it's path. I could help it eject the catching the tray with my fingernail as it pushed out a bit after I hit the eject button. The front part of the tray can be removed by gently lifting two tangs on the bottom and sliding it upward, allowing the gasket to be removed. Upon removal, the gasket was obviously deformed, smushed wide, and quite sticky, which was probably helping it latch on to keep the tray from opening. I trimmed the gasket with scissors and reversed it so the sticky part faced the front of the drive tray, yielding a non-sticky surface between the tray/bezel contact. There still some residual smudge on the drive tray, but it opens reliably now.

The LiteOn was more of a humdinger. Hitting the eject button yielded some small mechanical noises as the mechanism tried to open, but the tray didn't budge and it couldn't be coaxed to open by pulling. It required a strong assist by using a paper clip. I took the metal enclosure off the drive, yielding it's plastic frame and internals. There was nothing apparently wrong. Had I tested at this point, I would have found that it ejected smoothly in this state. However, I incorrectly assumed a lubrication issue and applied some thin silicone grease to all the sliding surfaces in the drive. After lubrication, I powered the drive and found the naked mechanism worked smoothly, concluding I had solved the problem, the drive was reassembled and put back on the PC, where it promptly refused to open, as before.

Several repeat inspections failed to find the problem. Testing showed that the drive would open when naked, but when the protective metal shell was in place, it would get stuck closed. I initially concluded that the rubber drive band, a square belt of about 25 mm diameter, between the motor and the tray gear train, was worn out. This part fails commonly enough that they can be purchased on Amazon. This seemed rational as I could see the spindle spinning under the belt when the drive was trying to open the tray. However, the belt was under good tension and everything looked OK. It also did not explain why the drive worked fine when the case was removed. The drive also ejected ok when the plastic frame was manually torqued in various ways, so it seemed unlikely that metal enclosure (which was in find shape) was distorting the drive mechanism.

A google search showed a post in the digitalFAQ forum where a user complained that they were having problems with a drive leaving "gunk" on the center of CDs, and suggested that the drive spindle was sticking to the bearing in the top of the drive when a CD was not present. It took a moment (meaning, several hours) for the implications of this to sink in for me. The drive ejects by lowering the drive spindle to allow a clear path for the tray to slide forward. When a disk is inserted, the spindle raises and presses the disk into a bearing on the top of the drive house. If there's not a disk present, and the spindle is sticky, it will adhere to the drive housing lid (aha!). When a disk is present, there's a few millimeters travel which gives the mechanism enough momentum to break free.

Thus, I resolved to "solve" the LiteOn problem by storing the drive with a blank CD-R inside of it. If it starts having problems with ejecting, I'll probably employ the talcum powder trick to dry the rubber surface.