Anyone have a bolt(s) fall off of the shift rod at the front or the rear end?

I replaced the stock linkage rod with a custom HD rod. The torque on the bolts was very high. I didn't torque them as tightly because I thought it was excessive as it came from the factory... and first the front bolt dropped out and a week later the rear bolt dropped out. Shame on me for not checking the rear bolt when I replaced the front one but I didn't forget to torque them plenty when I did the swap. Also, the front bolt fell out and had a lock nut on it and I have never had one of those fail. This has to be an excessive amount of vibration to make this happen...

The HD custom rods aren't recommended for a Sport Glide but I though that was just for the fact that the rear transmission connecting linkage isn't straight and I didn't care about the cover that is straight and supposed to make the installation look cool.

The shift rod does connect the two actuation rods at an angle... which the others that I replaced did not or did at a much narrower angle.

Just want to find the fault and get it fixed... not a pleasant experience.

 

On those Heim joints you are tightening down on the center sleeve that rotates. Those should be tight. The movement that you get is from the ball rotating in the socket not that sleeve rotating.

If you want to make sure they don't come off use a distorted thread lock nut like these. These are way more secure than ny-lock nuts.

https://www.mcmaster.com/locknuts/sy...read-locknuts/

 

loc-tite blue is your friend and the torque is there for a reason

 

I replaced mine with the cool black one from HD on my 2020 Fat Bob. I also changed the hardware to Black Chrome bolts and nuts and blue loctite torqued pretty tight. No issues so far. Torque those down as the ball joint will ensure free play

 

I think that the custom one that I got from HD wasn't made for this bike (I discovered later when looking it up on the HD website) but I thought it was just because of part number 46 and 50 being different. I looked at my failed link I(I installed it with the heim joints on the outside of both 44 & 50 which was what the instruction showed). The above image is from Ronnie's HD specfically for my Sport Glide. It shows the shaft going from outside (necessary) to the inside which slightly reduces the angle of the rod. I'm going to go buy at least 2 extra sets of the bolts and a lock nut to carry with me and see if the reduced angle makes a difference. Trust me, I don't do anything on a Harley without thread locker. Getting to the bolt that connects to the transmission lever is a PIA and is a bad design and I can't figure out why they felt it was necessary to curve the top of the lever so that you had to struggle with the level's position to get the bolt to clear the primary.