This tech tip is for all of the people who are just starting to wrench on their own motorcycles, although I have met a few old timers who may not know it. All of the big four makers do this on most of their machines. I don’t know about HD or the current European brands but all of the top Japanese motorcycle companies do it. They put punch marks on the various components that mount to shafts with splines. Shift lever, decompression levers, drum brake levers etc. almost always have punch marks indicating the correct  alignment of the part to the shaft. Here is an example below from a Honda drum brake.

So now you know one more thing to look for when you start to tear into your own machine, and should your atv or motorcycle not have punch marks like this you can always add them before taking it apart if you need to. After all anything that makes it easier to reassemble your parts and get your machine running in top form is a great thing.