I recently purchased a used Harley branded forward control setup from a 14’ street bob. I have an 07’ street bob that already has forwards on it but they’re an off brand and don’t accept traditional Harley pegs. The off brand setup utilized the mid control shaft for the kit. The Harley kit doesn’t utilize that shaft at all and recommends you take it out and connects to the rear shaft directly on the transmission. I don’t feel like pulling the primary cover to take mid control shaft out so I will most likely find a way to leave it just in case I ever want to go to mids. My next question is the rear arm that connects to the transmission, Does that arm need to be changed to a different arm for the forward controls? The used setup I got has that arm. But idk if I have to change it or not. Is it the same regardless of forward vs mid control? Can it be changed without taking the primary off? I can see the hex head bolt that I would need to loosen to get off. But I’m trying to figure out if I even need to.

 

They are completely different linkages, it seems. I knew that the main rod was different, but looking at the book here it seems like that arm you're asking about removing is also different. The vertical arm towards the rear that attaches to the transmission is HD-33849-97 for mids, and HD-33883-06 for forwards. The rods themselves are different. The next part in line is the 'SHIFTER LEVER' and those are obviously different as you said. The next part is called a 'SHIFT LEVER', which is very mildly interesting. It's the same for both forwards and mids.

Sounds like the offbrand kit is made to let you be able to make the conversion without going into the primary, so that's pretty neat. Not so neat for you now, though, I suppose.

EDIT: I should have mentioned that this is just from my 2011 Dyna book, and I can't say for sure if it's the same for your bike or not.

 

The thing I don’t get is when I look up the part Diagram for a 14’ or 07’ for the gear shifter. It shows regardless of forwards or mids that lever doesn’t change. The dashed line in this picture goes to either.

 

The way I read it is that the diagram is showing both options for forwards and mids from the rod onwards, but doesn't show two different 'LEVER, shifter rod' parts in the illustration. However, the table lists it as having two different part numbers for the same (diagram) index number. So there really are two different parts, but they didn't represent that in the diagram, just the table.



What's interesting to me is that the FWD/MID thing really breaks their nice formatting for these tables. I think they use the GY = FXDF system because it keeps this book from being several pages longer. They can list all four models on one line this way, because listing the FXDF style names would run multiple lines, pushing the tables to multiple pages and so on. When they have to discriminate the FWD/MID thing they do it in parentheses after the part number which makes sense since those aren't different Dyna models, per se. I wonder if the FXDF is the only model that has this sort of thing going on with options within a model, or if some of the Touring bikes or Sportsters are like this, too. Seems to be the only Dyna that has it.