I know this is an old topic. I did some searching on the forum but didn't find much, except for Bill Parr's suggestion to go with the roller.
My bike has the roller and it's been just fine that way. I am actually asking this for a friend (Tom Newman) whose touring Rapide just had a failure in this area, after some 53,000 miles with no problems. His bike had the ball-between-rods setup. I know. He should put in a warranty claim. I should mention that the bike has a multi-plate clutch of unknown make, probably sourced from the club some years back. I assume this adds to the force applied to the release assembly compared to the stock clutch. Tom also lives in an urban area, so he uses the clutch rather more than us rural folk.
Here's what he found. The right-side rod had cracked at the ball end and mushroomed badly at the G91 end.
My theory is that the tiny surface area of the ball-to-rod interface finally fractured the rod due to its brittleness, thereby jamming it and causing it to spin with the shaft. The wear at the G91 end was the result, not the cause.
If this is correct, the solution seems to be to replace all worn parts but to use a roller, not a ball.
The two questions I have are 1) roller or ball? and 2) what's the best type of lubrication for the roller?
My bike has the roller and it's been just fine that way. I am actually asking this for a friend (Tom Newman) whose touring Rapide just had a failure in this area, after some 53,000 miles with no problems. His bike had the ball-between-rods setup. I know. He should put in a warranty claim. I should mention that the bike has a multi-plate clutch of unknown make, probably sourced from the club some years back. I assume this adds to the force applied to the release assembly compared to the stock clutch. Tom also lives in an urban area, so he uses the clutch rather more than us rural folk.
Here's what he found. The right-side rod had cracked at the ball end and mushroomed badly at the G91 end.
My theory is that the tiny surface area of the ball-to-rod interface finally fractured the rod due to its brittleness, thereby jamming it and causing it to spin with the shaft. The wear at the G91 end was the result, not the cause.
If this is correct, the solution seems to be to replace all worn parts but to use a roller, not a ball.
The two questions I have are 1) roller or ball? and 2) what's the best type of lubrication for the roller?
Last edited:
