I don't know how many people this will help, but here it is anyway!

If you have the HD Heel Raiser foot peg/heel rest combo, and your heel rest is kind of sloppy when it's folded closed, you can try this to tighten up the works cheaply and permanently....

There is a little plastic ball, .250" in diameter, that holds the heel rest open or closed. It's pushed into detents on the heel rest arm by a spring and set screw... this is the tension adjustment that you can access from the front of the footpeg. But, this plastic ball can wear...or in my case, it can get deformed if you tighten the set screw too much. This will leave it loose and floppy, which drove me nuts.

If you remove the peg from the bike and separate the main components, you can then remove the pivot pin that holds the heel rest arm onto its splined collar. The pin isn't pressed in...you can get it out by lightly tapping on it with a 1/8 drift pin, or even the allen wrench you used to remove the footpeg...I didn't even need to tap mine with a hammer! Once it's out, the little plastic ball will fall out (if it's not so smashed that it's stuck in the hole). Replace that plastic ball with a stainless steel ball bearing, and put it all back together. Obviously, it will be easier if you loosen the set screw that holds the spring tension against the ball first.... And don't lose the two washers, or the spring, when you take it all apart.

Put a dab of grease into the detent dimples on the heel rest arm, and put some loctite on the adjusting set screw. Once everything is back together, tighten the adjusting set screw while swinging the heel rest open and closed. If you want to get it as tight as possible, keep doing this until the heel rest 'locks up'.. this is the point at which there is no compression left in the spring, and the ball cannot move far enough to climb out of the detents... don't force it, and don't use your foot...you need to feel for this by hand... If you leave it too tight and force it open or closed, you'll just deform something again.. but this time it won't be the plastic ball... it will be the heel rest, because that's probably softer than the ball bearing. This would be bad!

Anyway, once you feel it 'lock up', loosen the set screw just enough for it to move smoothly again.

I realize that if I hadn't overtightened the set screw on one of my pegs, this might not have been necessary. But they never snapped closed as firmly as they do now, and I'm also confident that they'll stay this way for a long time... whereas before, the plastic ball would inevitably have worn out over time.

The only problem is finding the ball... Lowes and HD didn't have them. But another hardware store in my area (Elliot's Hardware) carries individual stainless steel ball bearings. I think they were 34 cents each.

If you cannot find a ball bearing, you could also make one of your own... You could take a 1/4" diameter steel (or brass, or aluminum) rod (or bolt, or cheap screwdriver shank), and chuck it up in a drill.... hold the (spinning) chucked rod against a (spinning) grinding wheel, and round the end into a semi-spherical shape. Polish it a bit, then cut the end off, leaving you a piece of 1/4" round rod, 1/4" long, with a semi-sphere on one side... put that into your foot peg with the flat side against the spring... not as smooth as a ball bearing, maybe, but definitely better than the plastic ball that it came with...

Art

 

Cool, and thanks. I just bought the heel rest pegs so hopefully after reading this I wont set them to tight. If I do at least I'll know how to fix em.

 

Thanks. I have a set that have been sitting specifically because of that. I really wanted them to "click" into place and it was always a argument between me and the peg (which I always lost).

 

Had the same problem, tried the ball bearing and immediately saw that the heel rest was definitely softer than the ball bearing with just a few rotations of the heel rest.

I went to Ace Hardware and picked up a pair of "better" springs to replace the stock ones that came in the pegs (part of the problem) and found a pair of small nylon nut caps where the "cap" part was about the same size as the .25" ball bearing.



I rounded off the nut flats with a Dremmel tool which turned the nut cap into a nice index pin with a rounded top and inserted that into the Heel Raiser with the better springs.

So far, it seems to be a pretty good solution that allows the heel arm to 'snap' into place without any risk of doing further damage to the arm.

Darn shame H-D didn't use some type of nylon index pin to begin with... along with a better spring. I hate it when I have to "fix stuff" when it's brand new.

 

Art - It does help and thanks for posting! I just did the same thing and didn't realize that I had over-tighten the detent and crushed it! The pegs came on the bike so I didn't install them and of course didn't fully understand how the adjustments work (but now I do!).

I'm going to call tomorrow and see how much the repair kit cost and if it's not too much I'll just replace that side one side.

Otherwise I will start looking for better springs and metal detent (ball bearings).

Again... thanks everyone for the posts - Lot's of good information.

-David