Rocker Clutch Assembly Install

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Rocker Clutch Pedal Assembly

 Now we’re going to do some mock-ups with some of the parts we’ve gathered to make sure that everything we’re proposing to use fits properly, has the correct fasteners, properly sized bolt holes and doesn’t interfere with the frame or other parts. All of this early work should be done prior to painting the frame.

This section is intended primarily for an audience of newcomers to bike building, but veterans may find some useful tidbits here and there.

What we’ll cover here with respect to installations involve ‘factory’ type parts, whether real OEM components or replacements made by aftermarket suppliers. Mounting of the so-called ‘custom’ parts is similar but the reason I refer to use stock parts on my bikes is because I know that if something breaks out in the middle of nowhere, I’ll be able to get replacements either from a dealership, a local bike shop, a club garage or another biker who has a stash of parts. That’s not going to be possible if I had a set of whiz-bang custom-made aluminum parts bolted on up front. That’s not to say that I don’t like custom parts but that I prefer custom parts I’ve made myself which won’t break.

If you do intend on using custom aftermarket parts this section may still be useful as you’ll get a chance to see stock components and understand why and how things were built and located in the fashion that they were which basically involved nothing more complicated than rider ‘posture’.

Keeping in mind that all motorcycles evolved from motorized bicycles, once the transition was made to purpose-built cycles with larger powerplants, frames and controls were still built around the old bicycle posture of the riders. As a result, seat positions were relative to the handlebars and controls were relative to a combination of said seat and bars. If you look at nothing but seat, bar and control locations almost all cycles from the 1940’s and up from all manufacturers used almost identical geometry and measurements even though their frames were significantly different.

In the late forties and early fifties bikers began stripping their bikes down to save weight and one of the first things to go was the old pogo-seat and its heavy mounting assembly. The new lightweight seats with their drum springs required that folks start to build custom handlebars to accommodate the new seating position while both of these changes created a need to relocate the foot controls further forward. Even though a huge number of things concerning choppers involves nothing more than ‘looks’ you can see that underlying everything, form still follows function. 

Rocker Clutches

All Big Twins were equipped with so-called ‘rocker-clutches’ prior to the introduction of the handlebar mounted clutch lever in 1952. They are still popular today with builders preferring to use ‘hand-shifters’. In fact, between 1952 and 1974 you could still special-order bikes with foot clutches and hand shifters since they remained popular for a very long time.

The rocker-clutch operates in a ‘heel-toe’ fashion were pushing the front pedal down with your boot toe ‘engages’ the clutch and off you go down the road. The front pedal pad is held in that position by an ‘over-center’ spring geometry and a friction disc inside the assembly. Once depressed you can take your foot off the pedal and place it on the floorboard. The friction disc can be adjusted to provide more or less resistance to pedal movement as desired.

When the ‘heel’ pedal tab is depressed the clutch ‘disengages’ for shifting or coming to rest at a stoplight. The spring and friction disc likewise hold the pedal in the rearward ‘down’ position while you’re waiting for the light to change so you can take your foot off the pedal to balance the bike at rest.

The operation of a rocker clutch becomes second nature for the rider after a few hours of practice. They are quite safe since once disengaged you can have both feet on the ground even with the tranny in gear. Remember; ‘heel to shift and toe to go’.

Newcomers to bikes often visually mistake the rocker clutch for a so-called ‘suicide clutch’. With a suicide clutch you have to keep the pedal depressed with your foot to disengage the clutch. The operation is like a car clutch pedal, hold it down to disengage and release your foot pressure to engage and motor away. If your foot slips off the pedal accidentally while the tranny is in gear, you’ll get a big surprise, hence the name ‘suicide’ as in inadvertently lurching into an intersection filled with cross traffic.

Like most stuff chopper related the suicide clutch came about for two reasons. One was drag racing and the other was for ‘looks. Racing with a rocker clutch is cumbersome at best and there is no way a stock rocker clutch ‘looks’ very attractive.

That’s not to say a person can’t build a rocker that looks ‘cool’, but I’ve only seen a few over the years.

While we’re on this subject it should be pointed out that there is no such thing as a ‘suicide-shift’. That term is mistakenly applied to any hand shifter assembly including the ever popular ‘jockey-shift’.

Rocker installation is fairly straight forward. Simply align the backing plate with the three threaded holes on the frame lug at the left side of the frame that is welded to the front motor mount bar.

Fasteners are usually included but in case they weren’t you’ll need two 3/8”-16 x 3/4” bolts for the ‘lower’ holes and one shorter 1/2” long bolt for the uppermost position.

Once the bracket is installed just ship the pedal into position and install the ‘over-center’ spring into position. To do this the pedal will need to be rotated so that it’s almost straight up and down. Once the spring is attached use both hands to slowly rotate the pedal into a horizontal position as seen below.

The pedal is now going to be under a fair amount of spring tension so be carefully you don’t accidentally knock it back up. The pedal is restrained from extreme arcs of movement by the clutch linkage and the floorboards which we haven’t installed yet.

This is as far as we’ll go with the clutch setup for now so go ahead and using both hands again move the pedal to a vertical position and remove the spring, the pedal and the mounting bracket.

We’ll talk about installing the linkage and fine-tuning/modifying the stock (or custom) pedal for serious riding in a later section.